The Holy Dark
by KayRayLovesLove
Summary: He's in the atmosphere, Protecting the other half of his elysian Soul from the danger her divinity attracts. She's so beautiful. He can't help himself. "There are no miracles, no prayers answered...only accidents." The ultimate forbidden love. Dark.
1. one

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**All rightie, y'all. LONG ASS AUTHOR'S NOTE. Way to set the precedent, huh? I talk a lot. Get used to it.**

**A little birdie has landed on my shoulder and told me that hoppy-jumpy first person is not exactly the correct way to write, despite the fact Stephenie Meyer did this in BD. So this shit is getting transcribed into third person limited. It sounds a hell of a lot better and it puts my obsessive-compulsive mind at ease.**

**For those of you who already have me on Story Alert, I'm super-duper sorry. You're going to get nine false updates – they'll all go up quickly, though (I'm thinking Wednesday and Saturday afternoons). I hope they don't annoy you guys too much. But, if you're still interested in how this ends, don't delete me from your Story Alert. I still plan on finishing it – just correctly. In the meantime, feel free to reread (for those of you who alert'ed in May and early June, the prose will be completely different because I've partially rewritten every chapter). I think the detached perspective provides a more refreshing insight. I dunno. Form your own opinion.**

**Eh. Isn't this what FF is about? Perfecting your writing skills? Don't get too frustrated please ^^**

**Shutting up now.**

**Edit: OH SHIT OH SHIT I TOTALLY FORGOT TO POST THIS UP HERE. Prolly cas I'm deviating from my prewritten chapters and I didn't get her until chapter six rolled around, but . . .**

**PeepToe's my amazing Beta – go bow and kiss her feet NOW, god dammit! She's the fucking best! Plus she can speak calmly and rationally to me when I'm freaking out about something. Which I love.**

~x~

**Chapter One**

**Restraint**

~x~

_And all that's best of dark and bright . . . _

_. . . Meet in her aspect and her eyes._

~x~

Nothing like this had ever happened in their three thousand years.

This constant, overwhelming sensation. It was crippling. Distracting. He didn't have time.

He knew that if he were sealed into a body, he would be beyond comprehending a feeling so strong. His lungs would drop; his heart would burst. It would be overload. There would not be enough room in his limited human shell to house such a staggering emotion.

But what was he to do? What choice did he have? Everything was already preconceived. The universe was already set in motion. There was no backing out. There was no decision.

He could not tell if this bothered or relieved him. His will had been taken away against his better judgment . . . but did he want it back? Did he want to be rid of this passion? He already Knew the answers. So why was he asking himself these questions? He was going in circles. Endless, endless circles.

With every sunrise brought by the planet's rotation, he would watch her rise with it and walk the Earth, tormented by the fact that he could not walk the Earth with her without damning himself for eternity.

He didn't have a clue about what to do, albeit the infinite Knowledge that was tied to being a mutated Soul. He Knew exactly where she was at every time of day. He could See her from every vantage point in the atmosphere. When a threat was posed, he Protected her from it. He would prevent a car crash by rousing the tired driver whose thoughts were otherwise occupied. He would steer away the rapist by turning his gaze to a different teenage girl, whom, in the mind of the pedophile, he saw as prettier . . . easier. He would inject regret into the robber's conscience, and when he couldn't, he would force the criminal's eyes to look toward a richer individual. It was not always in everyone's best interest, but he had kept her alive these past seventeen years, which was a miracle in and of itself.

It was common to have to direct these dangers away from his half on Earth . . . but this incarnation in particular was a magnet for trouble. She was naïve, innocent, and so, so beautiful. She was an easy target, and everybody saw.

Oh, and how clumsy she was!

There was nothing he could do to shift the damned rock she tripped over on the sidewalk. There was nothing he could do to help her up when she fell down the stairs. And he could only watch, filled with dread, as she bumped head-on into person after person after person. Despite his greatest efforts over the past three millennia, he had quite thoroughly learned his lesson – the only way to Protect her was to influence the living that surrounded her.

The job was made easier with the Knowledge. There was not a sight that escaped him. There was not a thought that filtered through his mind unheard.

The only sights and thoughts he could not catch were hers.

To see her, he had to look through someone else's eyes. To know her thoughts, he had to listen to the edited versions that fell from her lips, and to hear them, he had to borrow somebody else's ears.

It was maddening.

When she was alone, he had to rely on the fact that he would Know when something threatened her artificial peace. If he didn't pay attention – if he permitted himself to get caught up in the ceaseless questions he asked himself while she slept – the danger would come flooding in.

The danger that was attracted to the godlike qualities of their Soul.

The danger that would increase exponentially if he were to walk the Earth with her.

He no longer questioned their inimitable situation. He had given up on finding an answer to it centuries ago. All he knew was the history, the outcome, and the now. The motivation behind creating them, the reasons, how it happened – he would never know. And he didn't think he would ever want to.

When they were still one Being, one whole Soul, Their mere existence wreaked havoc on the world around them. One would drop, dead, if their gaze fell upon Their divinity. The trees and flowers in Their line of sight would shrivel and turn to dust, then flutter to the ground in piles of brown ash amidst the dead blades of grass. Tornados followed in Their footsteps while hurricanes formed in Their wake. The animals ran fast because their instincts screamed mercy, but they were never fast enough. As one entity, They were invincible. However, Their indestructibility was rendered completely void . . . for when everything within Their sight was destroyed simply because They _existed_, simply because They _were_, where was the joy to be found?

God spared them. Their divine Soul was halved in two. The process could only be described as terrible – it was a time that neither of them tried to remember . . . not that she was even able to remember. Not that she would recognize the truth if she were to ever hear it. Her human mind could only hold so many memories – and it was physically impossible for her complex brain to form the number of connections she would need in order for her to even begin to remember so far back into the past.

With no preventive capacity to restrain him, he drowned in his recollections. He expanded with every new sight and sound into the air, hovering over the mountaintops, invisible to the human eye. It was not out of the question that he could perhaps one day be sighted by a human in a crowd . . . but how could one see him, when they didn't know to look for him? Humans could only see what their unoriginal, nondescript minds allowed them to see, so how could their unimpressive imaginations ever conjure up a creature such as he? They could not see the ninth color of the rainbow. They did not notice the Heavens that surrounded them. They couldn't even answer the questions posed by the very planet they lived and breathed on – how could anyone ever expect them to notice him, a product of what could only be a very bored, very powerful hand?

He wished he could sigh. His opinions on the human race were not belittling – they were more easily composed of pity. Their world had so much to offer, but their bodies only perceived a sliver of it. And while so much pity swirled deep, a strong, boiling envy churned deeper, tingeing his thoughts green. They had the power to express the way they felt. They could make noise. They saw the world through real eyes. They were substantial, corporeal, and very much alive. He could not go so far as to call himself living – what kind of life was this, anyway, floating through the dark sky at a fixed point above her, waiting for her life to be jeopardized, waiting for her to die? For when she died, the pieces of their Soul would switch, and he would be the one living the beautiful life on Earth.

Selfish.

He didn't wish this upon her. He didn't want her to have this tedious, mundane existence amongst the clouds while she watched over him . . . again. Her lack of memory and her ignorance were the two things that saved her. Without her Knowing, she could have bliss.

He wanted to live with her.

He wanted to go to Earth.

Would she want him? Would she know him?

Would the onset of tragedy destroy her?

He Knew the answers to all of these questions.

Of course she would want him. She wouldn't _know _him, but she would _Know_ him. Deep within the core of her being, she would Know him. There was a connection between them, like a magnetic force. If he were to touch the Earth, he would be compelled to move closer to her. He could live with her . . . but at what price?

Heaven for her?

Hell for him?

He could easily push that consequence aside. It was inevitable for them to be separated in the afterlife, for if they were both sent to Heaven's gate, would they endanger the safe haven that was paradise? It was not worth the risk. These were the terms they had agreed to – the one who finally cracked, the one who finally travelled to Earth before their time, would be the one to go to Hell, while the other went to Heaven. Did it really sound so bad when one compared it to the alternative? Because in the beginning, before they had begged clemency, both of them were doomed to the seventh fiery circle.

Earth, in ruins?

She would always have the option to push him away . . . but who was he to barge in on her peace and taint it with his evil? She was part of what used to be a monster, yet she was good. All the bad had gravitated towards him. He could only hope that it would stay that way, for he was too afraid that if he delved into his Knowledge to find the future, he would not be happy with it.

Everyone she loved . . . gone?

He could never dismiss this possibility when he reflected upon it. He wouldn't ever be able to forget that his presence would only bring darkness and not light. No matter how much he desired, no matter how hard he willed it to be true, there would only be despair and not happiness.

Their love would be a desolate wasteland, lonely and foreboding, an island all its own. No one would be able to hold a candle to it, in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the term. No love would be as strong, but all the light in the world would eventually be extinguished.

He could not bring himself to care enough about the planet's well-being. The only thing that had prevented him from going to her on the day she was born was the fact that she wouldn't ever have been able to experience life on Earth the way it should be.

He wanted to be human for her, in every aspect of the word. He wanted to have his own Soul so that he didn't have to worry about her surroundings' downfall and the effect it would have on her.

Tears would be shed, and blood would be in their hands. Innocent people would die as their bond grew stronger, as their Soul slowly repaired itself. There would be nowhere to run, nowhere to flee.

He didn't care.

It was on a whim.

He never did things on a whim.

But, with all his inhibitions tossed aside, at an unnatural speed, sparking flames that trailed in blue-violet ribbons behind him, he flung himself towards Earth.

Toward her.

Toward Bella.

~x~

Why did she always find herself in this position?

Sprawled on her back, the cloudy, grey sky as her ceiling. Her arms spread wide at her side, palms up. Her legs bent uncomfortably beneath her. The uneven sidewalk marking her, the little pieces of gravel sticking to her skin. And all the people gazing down at her, trying to help her up.

Damned rock.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she reassured them, staggering painfully to her feet. Looking around, she saw a mass of shiny black hair and russet-colored skin bobbing a head above the rest of the crowd that had accumulated outside of building three.

"Bella," Jacob sighed, sounding relieved. He took her in his arms and crushed her to his large form, and she gasped, wincing. Her side was throbbing. Another bruise to add to the collection.

"Oh, I'm sorry." He let her go, but kept a strong arm wound around her waist. She felt a little wobbly. The people were walking to their classes again, all interest lost once they saw that, once again, the infamously clumsy Bella Swan had survived yet another fall. They followed the crowd, trudging through the ever-present mist to get to the cool, dry lunch room.

She heard Jacob chuckle. Was he laughing at her? His smile was wide, his teeth shockingly white against his dark skin, and a dimple popped up in his chin. The shove she was about to aim at him turned into a half-hearted elbow nudge. She couldn't be mad at that smile.

Now he was shaking his head. "There isn't a day that goes by, Bella," he laughed, pulling her with him to the lunch table where their friends sat. Jacob dropped into his usual seat near Ben and Tyler, and she settled beside him, next to Alice and Angela. Angela noticed the tender way Bella moved and smirked knowingly, tossing her long black hair behind her shoulder.

"Don't be giving me shit about it, too," Bella threatened lightly, throwing her bag onto the table. She pulled out an apple and bit into it, throwing a joking glare towards Alice, just in case she decided she wanted to smirk too. Her tripping over everything in sight was a sensitive subject.

"Shit about what?" Angela asked innocently, bringing a forkful of mystery meat to her mouth. Bella shuddered internally. How did she eat that stuff?

Alice was unfazed by Bella's glare. She didn't even think Alice noticed the exchange, because she immediately launched into one of those stories that kept on going until she got to the point. Or until a shopping excursion was up in the air.

"You'll never guess what happened during second bell," Alice proposed around a mouthful of food. Bella didn't even bother trying to guess, because she knew Alice would have cut her off the second she opened her mouth. "Jasper sat beside me!"

Oh, great. There _wouldn't _be a point this time.

They rolled their eyes. They would never understand Alice's obsession over the tall, brooding blond. He didn't talk to anybody besides Emmett, who was, impossibly, even scarier than Jasper. They were just . . . trouble. But neither Angela nor Bella were convincing enough when they tried to dissuade Alice away from Jasper, so all they could do was hope she moved on. Their prayers were obviously not being answered.

"Um . . . I would have never guessed, Alice," Angela said dryly. "But what's the big deal?"

Alice's bright blue eyes were shiny and wide. "He always sits in the corner, Angela! That is the _big deal_," she complained. "And I was sitting in the middle of the classroom. He _never _sits in the middle of the classroom! And he _looked _at me . . . He doesn't look at anyone. Anyone!"

Listening to her little speech made Bella realize how utterly blind Alice's infatuation had made her. She had just intentionally admitted Jasper was an outcast, by choice no less, and she had still managed to make him sound exciting. Bella couldn't fully comprehend the excitement. Sure, he had that whole "tall, dark, and handsome" thing going for him. But why did that matter when his eyes were so full of . . . nothing?

"Maybe he'll say hi soon . . . ," Alice thought aloud. Her eyes glazed over. Bella felt so terrible for her. She really had it bad. That was why she pretended to listen to her when she lapsed into the usual gushing over his dreaminess.

Until the cafeteria brightened considerably.

Angela pulled Bella out of the dazed stupor she had slid into while Alice was talking about Jasper, and she pointed to one of the tall windows that had been built to let in as much of the minimal amount of sunlight Forks had to offer.

Sunlight!

"Alice," she said loudly, looking straight at her. She was staring over Bella's shoulder at nothing, thinking she was still talking to her. "Alice!"

". . . and then he just, like, ran his hand through his hair and sighed . . . What?" Her eyes were clear again. Back to reality.

"Is that the sun?" Alice squealed, and she clapped her hands. "Come on, let's go get a table in the courtyard before they all fill up!" She grabbed them both by the wrists and pulled them towards the double doors that led out to the sodden, underused square of grass littered with picnic tables. Bella caught her bag before she had taken them too far.

"Bye, Jake!" Bella called, and he waved back.

Her feet were dragging along the wet ground, digging into the soft dirt, and so were Angela's. They were some of the first ones out there, but that didn't stop Alice from shooting like a bullet towards the table right in the center – the one with direct access to the sun. Bella was impressed with her strength; she was pulling a little over two hundred pounds behind her, undeterred, propelled by her undying enthusiasm over the little things.

"Alice, the table isn't going anywhere," Angela tittered, and they plopped down beside her.

"Okay so anyways . . . ," Alice continued, immediately revisiting her half-aware state of mind. It was easier for Bella to block her out when she was surrounded by the warmth she had taken for granted back in Phoenix. She closed her eyes and laid her head down on the table, feeling at peace, but even then Alice didn't stop her incessant chatter.

Suddenly, she was jolted awake, being shaken roughly by both of them.

"Bella! Bella, look!" They were both staring up at the sky, and so were a couple other people that had trickled outside with them.

"Yeah, yeah, it's the sun . . . ," she mumbled. "It's not an endangered species."

"No, Bella, it's not the sun! Look, before it goes away!"

Disgruntled, she turned her gaze in the direction of their pointed fingers, and her eyes took on a similar look to the people that surrounded her.

There, in the midst of the bright blue, in the middle of the day, was a shooting star. Flickering, indigo streams trailed behind the glowing mass as it streaked slowly across the sky, lighting up the grey clouds around it so that they shone with an aura of violet. She had never seen anything like it – her eyes grew impossibly wider with every inch of sky the star claimed.

But, once the wonder passed, a strange, ominous sense of foreboding settled into the pit of her stomach.

And the worst part was . . . she didn't even know why.

~x~

**A/N**

**Okay, guys . . . first real fic. Go easy.**

**The quote in the beginning is an excerpt from Lord Byron's poem, the one everybody knows, "She Walks in Beauty."**


	2. two

**A/N:**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**All right y'all. This shit got rewritten. Like, as in, I rewrote the whole chapter before I put it back up.**

**And, might I say, I no longer loathe my Chapter Two (: I used to have a real issue with that.**

**Oh, and some of you are still confused as to why chapters three through nine have disappeared – if you are one of those people, go check out the massive A/N in the previous chapter.**

~x~

**Chapter Two**

**Rebirth**

_Touch the clouds_.

They were over him. Not beside him, or under him – over him_._

_Reach._

Undulating blades of rippling green grass rose toward the endless sky, waving, swelling and seeming to roll, craving the heat, and the vast, unbroken blue that dominated his vision – his _vision _– moved and shook and panned. Changing, expanding . . . but not.

No . . . .

No, that was _him._

He was turning his head. Seeing. Using his eyes.

Extended in the air, held loosely and timidly, yet determinedly, was an arm, fingers outstretched and waiting. Long and linear, prominent knuckles, square nails, dusted with auburn hair.

_My right hand._

They were moving, the fingers.

The downy white nebulas that floated miles away came nowhere close – so far away, so out of reach.

He reveled in this.

_Human._

_On Earth._

_Those are my fingers._

He wiggled them experimentally. Clenched, unclenched. Twisted the wrist. Watched the muscles turn and modify underneath the skin.

It dropped to his side then, limp.

And he jumped, startled – what was that noise he just heard?

_I heard._

It was lilting, low and musical, and he wanted to hear it again.

Had that been him? Had he laughed?

_Am I smiling?_

The hand that had fallen back to the grass moved in tandem with his thoughts, obeying exactly, precisely, to touch a fixed point below his eyes, a point he could not see, and he _felt._

Stretched gently, softly, lips lifted, tendons shifted beneath skin.

Yes. He was smiling.

And then he heard it once more – that same masculine rumble. It filled the air and floated away, the vibrations dying beneath his hungry fingertips, slowly fading. It was silent again, apart from a steady, pounding _tha-thump, tha-thump,_ and the mild whispering of the sweet-smelling wind through the grass and the leaves that surrounded him.

All around, blocking him in on every side, were rows and rows of low-growing, broad-leafed, green foliage, dotted with rich-purple ovals, wrapped around wooden supports. They all quivered as the breeze blew through their resting places.

A vineyard.

Where . . . ?

He didn't know. He didn't _Know._

The quiet, pounding tempo intensified, and he could feel an echo of it in his wrists.

Panic?

_My heart?_

The sharp, urgent beats were increasing, fast, impatient, and the rhythm rivaled harsh breathing.

_My breathing._

He didn't Know anymore!

But then . . . how could he remember? He wasn't supposed to be able to remember – and a new wave of panic saturated his system. Was this a bad thing, that he could remember why he was here, why he had come, that he remembered everything worth remembering? It shouldn't have surprised him that he didn't have the Knowledge anymore – of course he didn't.

What shocked him was that he could even remember being able to Know in the first place.

Fear was coursing through him now – was he hallucinating? Did he even have the ability to hallucinate, or was that something only humans could do?

Was he really, truly, human?

And then the scenery changed completely, the blue moving up and out of sight, the grapes taking its place.

Dizzy.

His hands were at his temples, and for a second, everything was black.

_Did I blink?_

He heard a jagged intake of breath. Through his own ears. Through his own lungs.

He was unscathed. Long, lean legs slanted and bent to meet a hard, V-shaped torso. Strong, muscular arms cradled his head, elbows propped up against knees, and bronze-colored hair was everywhere – forearms, shins, chest, thighs.

A clear pond like glass glistened a couple yards away, encircled by tall, willowy cattails, buzzing with emerald-eyed dragonflies.

Carefully, he lifted himself off the ground.

Feet planted themselves in grass, toes curling.

Arms outstretched for balance, hands wavering.

Legs straightened – wobbled. Steadied.

Breath caught.

And he drew himself to his full height.

The ground was so far away . . . .

He hesitantly moved his right leg forward. Waited.

Still standing, and encouraged, his left leg followed suit. And before he even realized he had traveled so far, he was standing at the edge of the pond, gazing at the reflection of a seventeen-year-old human boy.

At first glance, he was striking. If your stare lingered . . . he was devastating.

He had a square, angular jaw, peppered with stubble, and a straight Roman nose that divided his face evenly in two. Salmon-colored lips enveloped unblemished white teeth. Ghostly pale skin stretched unbroken across his pronounced cheekbones and alabaster forehead, creased by eyebrows raised high in surprise, and an unruly mess of beautifully chaotic bronze hair fell over exquisite violet eyes framed with thick, black lashes.

He blinked.

To say the least, he was inhumanly beautiful, despite the fact he was covered with dirt and ashes.

Hah.

That couldn't be him.

But it was. He raised his hand once more to touch the slightly parted lips and started when he saw the action mirrored in the pond.

He was laughing, and the sound was so similar to his own, he couldn't help but believe that it was him.

. . . That was him.

And he was alive.

On Earth.

Suddenly . . . he felt very, very small. Irrelevant. Of no consequence. The air was closing in around him – squeezing him, choking him. He felt confined. He needed more room. He tried to expand, to take up more space, desperately trying to alleviate this terrible sense of being tiny and insignificant . . . but then he remembered that humans could not stretch and shrink as they pleased. The freedom of being an unattached Soul, the relief that came with the ability to decide how much elbow room was necessary, had been stolen from him. He was now encased in this limited human body, and however beautiful that body might be, he felt trapped. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe.

He bent over the gentle slope and cupped his hands into the cool water, interrupting its tranquil state, and splashed it onto his face. Again. And again.

Breathe, you stupid human.

Was he already regretting his decision to come here?

Because his memory hadn't been erased as was usual with a new life on Earth, he was left with an ache for his true form. After this life, he wouldn't become the shining, silver mass that floated, unrestrained, through the clouds ever again. After this life, he wouldn't be soaring over forests, fields, and pockets of dirty human civilization while he watched his other half below him.

After this life, his next stop was a perpetuity of flames and inferno.

So what was he doing here, brooding and moping and depriving himself of oxygen?

He inhaled deeply, blinking water from his eyes, and looked around him.

A worn trail covered with shriveled leaves traced a path through the fields, twisting and turning, leading to an old-fashioned stone cottage that sat on a hill beside a bleeding sunset of cherries and crimsons and vermilions. The sun was slowly slipping from view over the horizon, casting a veil of pinks and oranges over the property, and a thin, trickling stream that traveled through a small wood fed the pond, swans swimming lazily at its mouth.

It was becoming darker now, and he knew he might get cold if he didn't find shelter.

He'd forgotten what it felt like to be cold.

He almost stayed, just to feel it again.

But, aware that feeling cold wouldn't be a pleasurable experience, he followed the footpath to the cottage. He'd need money . . . and clothes – humans were uncomfortable with nudity. A shame, really.

And then he had an . . . urge.

He needed to move, and he needed to move fast. He had to feel his new muscles ripple and distend around his bones, to have the wind blow relentlessly against his bare skin, to stretch the new sinews and fibers and ligaments that allowed him to _run._

The grapes were flying past him in streaky purple-green blurs, row after row disappearing from view, and his arms were pumping at his sides, his feet hitting the ground in quick, resounding slaps. He laughed once again.

This was _so _much better than walking.

He had to slow, though.

There were people.

The chalet was surrounded with colorful flowers and blossoming fruit trees, and behind it was a stone fountain bordered by wrought-iron benches painted black. Near a circular stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus, there was a White-winged Tern that played in a marble birdbath, splashing water on an intricately welded metal trellis of red thorn roses.

He cocked his head.

Listened.

There was a man, he was sure. He heard his voice on the first floor, mumbling in Italian.

. . . _Too busy. I got too much to do, can't wash the damned dishes . . . . Crazy woman . . . ._

He hid behind a wide tree and pressed his back against it, still listening. The man had stepped out the door after telling his wife he was going to the market, and then he was walking toward a small, sleek back car parked on the other side of the house. Sounds of clanking pots and pans under running water filtered out the window along with the muffled complaints of an Italian woman. He peered around the trunk and chanced a glance at the man.

The man was driving down a gravel road now, still mumbling, but when his car took the turn and his profile was within his line of sight, his lips weren't moving.

_Serves her right. She can clean the mess up herself . . . terrible dinner . . . ._

That wasn't right . . . .

Didn't the noises humans made come from their mouths?

His mouth hadn't even been moving!

He continued to stare in the man's direction, long after he had driven away, until the sun had fallen completely from the sky and he was swathed in darkness.

~x~

**You've prolly already figured out this is Edward, yes? And that the italics are, indeed, what he is thinking?**

**Smart lovelies!**

**This is as uneventful as it gets, y'all.**

**Not all chapters are going to be this short, but I wanted his first experience on Earth to stand alone.**

**Oh, and by the way, if you want the version of this chapter I posted before I rewrote it, just PM me. I'll be happy to send it to you (: It'll be in first person, though.**


	3. three

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**Heyy, y'all (:**

**Rewrite number three. How's it turning out?**

**I'd like to say I'm doing this for my own entertainment, and that I really don't care if anyone reads this . . . but that's bullshit. Review, lovelies, because I love having conversations with you ^^ **

~x~

**Chapter Three**

**Realizations**

She awoke to diffuse grey light filtering through her curtained window.

There wasn't any initial shock in this discovery. Bella had woken up to a depressed, cloudy sky every morning since she'd moved to Forks . . . but she still couldn't dam the disappointment. It flowed through her limbs like a dull electricity and lingered behind her eyes, making them water with drowsiness. The only thing that registered now, in her lazy state of mind, was exhaustion. She couldn't wait to get this day out of the way so she could trip back under her old purple duvet.

Bella couldn't get the star out of her head. It had polluted her sleeping hours, coloring her dreams a smooth blue-violet with flashes of brilliant, vivid bronze. They would have been beautiful dreams if they hadn't hinted at a hidden terror – they made her want to run away. From what? She had no clue. And that bothered her. A lot.

She also had an itch. She was giddy. And there was this faint tugging sensation that was blooming in her core. Butterfly-flames were ignited in the pit of her stomach when she thought of the reason behind the beautiful dreams, and they flapped their hot, insubstantial wings against the walls of her abdomen mercilessly. Foreign, detached emotions were tumbling and somersaulting paths through her nervous system – and these feelings weren't hers. They had neither rhyme nor reason. And it was freaking her out.

Filled with the reluctance that only came on school days, she languidly swung her feet over the edge of the mattress, making sure they were firmly planted in the carpet before she chanced standing. She was her clumsiest in the morning. As if to prove this fact, she stubbed her toe on the door on her way to the bathroom, knocked over all the bottles in the shower domino-style, and accidentally poked herself in the eye with the blunt end of her toothbrush. She wasn't quite sure how she managed the latter.

So it was gonna be one of _those _days.

She was choking back dry wheat cereal and tying her wet hair in a messy knot when she heard Jacob honking his horn impatiently. Again. They were always five minutes behind schedule, but he rarely ever felt rushed enough to blare his horn at her. Bella flew out the door, earning a, "Whoa, there," from Charlie, and she quickly scrambled into the Rabbit that was parked crookedly behind the cruiser.

"Fuck, Bella, I've been waiting for years," Jacob complained, pulling out of the driveway with a deeply-ingrained scowl etched into his familiar face.

Yeah. It was definitely one of _those _days.

She hadn't even been awake for half an hour and she was already miserable. She huffed, wondering what else could possibly go wrong.

Jacob turned left down a road that was barely discernable beneath the never-ending puddles. He covered the silence with music, turning it up so loud she couldn't even hear herself breathe, while she pondered which side of the bed he'd woken up on.

Alice was standing against the passenger door of her silver Volvo, tightly clutching a text book to her chest, biting her lower lip so hard it blanched white. Her hyacinth eyes were pointed in Jasper's direction, watching him slowly disappear into the wet, green forest carrying a plastic Ziploc baggie, the contents of which questionable. Not fishy at all.

Alice saw Bella walking up to her as she left Jacob behind to stew in his Rabbit, but Alice's eyes only briefly met Bella's before they darted back to follow Jasper's retreating form.

"Just talk to him already, Al," Bella suggested. They fell into step beside each other, making their way out of the parking lot towards the cluster of brown brick buildings.

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that?" Alice whined, her shorn back hair falling into her eyes. Her face was pinched into a pout, screwing up her elfin features so they no longer appeared delicate. She blew a lock out of her eye before complaining, "Bella, even the teachers don't talk to him first. Because they know what'll happen if they do."

"What will happen?" Bella asked, confused.

Alice shook her head, dismissing her effectively. "I mean . . . at least he looks at me now. That has to be worth something . . . ," Alice trailed off, wearing that wistful look that had been plastered to her features a lot lately.

They sat through Trig together, Alice staring longingly into space, Bella jolting her out of her obviously inappropriate daydreams. They continued this pattern all the way through English until Bella finally snapped. Alice was going to owe her later. Big time.

"Alice," she pleaded. She sounded twelve. They were walking down the crowded hallway, about to go their separate ways. Alice was headed towards the class she had with Jasper, strutting determinedly through the sea of people. Bella didn't even need to say the rest of it out loud – Alice gave her a short nod, took a deep breath, and swept gracefully into Biology.

Bella took a deep breath of her own, relieved. At the time, she had no idea that her encouragement would steer her best friend away from her.

~x~

He was running through innumerable fields of grapes, skirting the edges of the towns he passed so he could travel unimpeded. If humans had seen him, they wouldn't believe. Humans couldn't run this fast. Humans couldn't fly over the ground, leaving no footprints, never growing tired. He hadn't tired. He hadn't thought he would ever be tired. That understanding was the glue that held the exhilarated grin to his face as he skimmed the earth with the soles of his new feet, which had become black with the dirt he was exposing them to. He was still covered in ashes, but at least he had had money in the pockets of the jeans he'd taken from the Italian man. The jeans should have chafed uncomfortably against his skin, burning into his flesh and leaving ugly red welts from the friction that was caused by his speed . . . but they didn't. He was completely uninjured – from the fiery ribbons that had wrapped him in their scorching embrace while he still fell through the sky, from the fall itself, and from all the other mishaps that would have harmed him if he were anything else. His neck should have snapped when he fell into the thorny bushes below the second story window of the vineyard cottage, just narrowly escaping the woman whose thoughts had warned him of her arrival. He should have been bleeding ubiquitously from all of the branches and rocks and twigs that had scraped against him while he ran. His skin should have been raw against his clothes. His eyes should have been itchy from never blinking – he wanted to see everything. His throat should have been dry from not drinking. He should have had a migraine from the way all of his senses were screaming at him: too loud, too bright, too much.

But he had not been in pain, he had no open wounds, and his bones were still attached at their joints. He was alive – and he was invincible. He laughed aloud, joy resounding. This was the best way to live.

~x~

She was excited; the urge to laugh was unbearable. A hysteric giggle escaped her lips, bubbling up from unfathomable depths, crawling up her insides until it flew out of her mouth in a quick exhale. She pressed her lips closed, trying to hold the rest in. If she had been alone, she knew she'd be on the floor, hands clutching her sides in pain from laughing so uncontrollably. She was still smiling against her will, and her shoulders were shaking hard, sending vibrations through the plastic chair that was attached to the desk.

Everyone had seen her. It was dead quiet, dead as asphalt, and the teacher had stopped mid-lecture, staring interestedly in her direction. She was still grinning like an idiot, and her classmates were ogling her openly. Bella, the crazy girl who was laughing for no reason.

What the fucking hell?

~x~

He had been running through Tuscany, of that he was sure, and his speculations were confirmed by the drone of the townspeople's thoughts in the back of his head. He could hear every thought within a ten mile radius, and when he didn't concentrate on tuning the voices out, the noise was deafening to the point that it was of hindrance. If he focused on something else, the noise turned into a low hum until he was far enough into the country that he only heard a handful random mumbles. It was hard to distinguish his own thoughts from the thoughts had been shoved in his head involuntarily, but none of it mattered. He was being driven by instinct.

He was following a magnetic pull coming from the west.

It tasted like Bella.

With every step he took, the pull became stronger, the excitement grew, and his laughter filled the air more often than not. He was closer to her than he had ever been, even when he had hovered directly above her in his divine state. While he had been close, he wasn't really _there_. Now he was tangible – now he was real. And he was walking – no, running – the Earth with her.

He was quick to learn the Italian language. He used it to converse with the shopkeepers, using stolen Euros to buy weatherproof clothes that actually fit, a Tracfone, and a water-resistant backpack to sling over his shoulder while he ran. He could recall her voice with perfect clarity – she spoke enunciated American English, his only clue to her whereabouts: the United States. He wondered incessantly how he was going to cross the Atlantic. While he had swum through the Ligurian Sea in a pair of swim trunks, and was now wandering through Cannes, France, in search of a shop to raid, he knew that he wouldn't be able to swim from Europe to America unaided. It would take too much time, and it would be too easy to get lost in the endless, crashing, green waves. He could have taken a boat, but that would have been nowhere near fast enough for his liking. His best option was to travel by plane.

But buying a plane ticket would mean having an identity, though. He had no paperwork to define who he was, no birth certificate, not even a name. He had no ID. No driver's license. And he was a minor.

That needed to be fixed.

He checked into a motel. The saltwater had made his hair hard and crunchy, and he reeked of fish from swimming with the whales and porpoises. He was in dire need of a shower.

He needed a name. His thoughts switched back and forth between the lives he remembered having and trying to recollect where Bella lived. He remembered Knowing exactly where she was every second of every day, but for the life of him, all he recalled of her location was that it was rainy, green, and sparsely populated. He began to resent humans again and their tiny brain capacities.

The tension in his muscles melted away once the steaming spray was on him, flattening his wild hair against his head on its course down to the ground again. The life he remembered the most about was his most recent. He had been born in 1901 and had lived the duration of his early years in Chicago, Illinois, as a doctor, the profession he chose after surviving the Spanish Influenza. It was all he could think to do to thank the physicians that had saved both his mother's life and his own. He chose to use his name from that life – Edward Anthony Masen. It was a normal enough name still. The names he had been christened with two thousand years ago were not as common, and were a great deal longer and more complicated.

He would need to forge paperwork, and he would need a substantial amount of money to do so. Right now, he was a nameless, faceless person, not even a number in the system. He didn't know who to go to, but the name popped into his head easily, as if the information was lurking in the back of his memory, waiting in the shadows to be of need.

This species baffled him. What he needed to remember most evaded him so completely, yet he could bring other information to the forefront of his mind with ease.

Jenks. England.

He stepped out from behind the curtain, leaving the water on. His next stop was Manchester.

~x~

Bella's day was shit.

And she could tell she wasn't alone in this assessment.

Alice was pouting that Jasper barely even acknowledged her when she had said hello. Bella could picture it in her head – Alice, plopping her book load in the desk next to Jasper's. Turning her body to face his, while he gazed, bored, in the general vicinity of the teacher. Alice bouncing excitedly for no reason, greeting him brightly. Jasper, turning his head in her direction, not meeting her eyes, and nodding shortly. And Alice's heartbreak, her face crumpling, disappointed. Bella's heart did a little twist of pity in her chest. Alice had her work cut out for her.

Angela couldn't stop sneezing or coughing. Bella could tell at lunch that Angela was holding most of it in – her face was red and blotchy, her eyes squinty and pink, and she looked terrible. Bella told her to feel better soon, and Angela smirked at her, but not before launching into a fit of hacking coughs while she moved her entire body away from the table so as not to spray germs in their direction.

Jacob . . . well, y'know.

Bella didn't want to have to put up with his shit on the way home, so she asked Alice for a ride. Alice stared dejectedly out her windshield at the sheeting rain the entire drive as Bella tried in vain to lift her usually high spirits back up by initiating small talk. She gave Alice a hug when she dropped her off on the front porch, and she wondered if more had played out than Alice had let on.

Charlie noticed how Bella dragged her feet through the living room and threw herself onto the couch, and he offered to make dinner that night. She jumped up right away. While she appreciated his intentions, his cooking would only make the day worse.

She kept it simple, heating up spaghetti sauce over the stove while she stirred egg noodles in a pot of boiling water. The task kept her hands busy, but it left her mind unoccupied, and it wandered, whistling suspiciously with its hands behind its back, to the star.

Sigh.

With dinner and a second shower out of the way, she was moaning expletives into her pillow. Frustrated. Everything felt all wrong inside. She punched the pillow. Why the fuck was she excited? There was nothing to look forward to, but Bella had this feeling of undying anticipation, deep in her gut. It started in her toes, creeping up her legs and travelling through her stomach, until it burned a path into her brain, making her feel lightheaded.

Sleep. She needed sleep.

And then Bella realized that wouldn't make anything better. She'd have the fucking dreams.

"Ugh!" she grunted, pushing her hands viciously through her hair for the umpteenth time and squirming uncomfortably on top of the covers. She was restless. Fuck. She wanted to jump out of the window and run, to follow the tugging inside her that was coming from the east. In her frustration, she began to cry, and then she groaned at her weakness. PMS: that had to be it.

Her fingers were pulling hard at her hair now. She wanted to yank all of it out of her scalp – maybe the pain of it would distract her from this shitload of useless emotion. If she should be feeling anything, she should be dead tired, not antsy and jumpy and yearning to skip down the driveway to the music only she could hear. From nowhere, utter joy and enthusiasm had sprung, ambushing her, filling her so completely she was high-strung and hyper, like she'd just consumed a gallon of coffee. The aftershock was still coursing through her system; it was like waking up after being sedated. She tossed and turned underneath the blanket, twisting it around her legs. On edge. Fuck. It was past one in the morning.

Maybe someone had finally shown her compassion. Oblivion soon took her, the familiar hazy darkness thawing her thoroughly, and she relaxed comfortably into her nightmares.

~x~

**A/N**

**Phew.**

**That one was painful to write. It took fo-EVAH.**

**Not much going on in this chapter – just establishing the characters. Whose POV do you like better? Would you like to read more through Bella, to watch as her life falls apart around her, eventually finding solace in the arms of a beautiful boy? Or would you like to read more through Edward, to see how he reacts to knowing Bella's misery is all his fault?**

**Oh, and review, si vous plait(:**


	4. four

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**Review and, um . . . I'll be your best friend?**

~x~

**Chapter Four**

**Reticence**

Color was air. And also the other way around.

She was floating along the edges of a sea that was azure and deep amethyst, but she was not really floating. Not really. In the distance, she saw dots of pointed white. They didn't matter now, for they were unreachable.

There wasn't any depth to this air – only color, and that was all she knew. And there was a different awareness: she knew exactly where she was, yet she had no clue. She had no body to speak of, and she knew not what a body was, but she longed for one. There was no such thing as a sense of touch. There was nothing to feel, but she wanted to feel, and she didn't know what that entailed. She could only happily float-but-not-float through this mass of indescribable beauty, admiring the mushrooming of color. Violet and cyan swirled aimlessly in an intricate dance, stirring together into indigo, then twisting away from each other to separate into two new shades of the same two colors, lavender and dark blue. Bella wanted to lift herself into the color-air and spin inside. It would be warm and welcoming, and she would feel complete. The colors came closer as she travelled, body-less, to their position in the universe. She was flying.

A flash of bronze, in the center there. A lonely pinwheel in the middle of the dark, lovely turmoil. It was clearer than before, than the first time – the fuzzy edges were more defined now, and the pinwheel spun with more purpose. She associated it with unattainable happiness and underlying dread. Now bronze had left, but its imprint on her lingered.

She no longer desired to twirl amongst the shades of purple and blue. She only wanted to run away from the bronze. Or to run with the bronze. But she could not run . . . and she could not object to either need, only combine the two so that they were neutral, and stay where she was, before things could progress any further. It would be fatal if she were to act upon any other whim than those already laid out for her – the spots of white light had something to do with that, and she would need to change that. She had to change that.

She _had _to change that.

The photons that had unconsciously moved towards her in their denied awareness of her purity were now fleeing from her, away from the bronze. They were dangerous.

Deep down, she knew the bronze shouldn't be here.

Please. She wanted bronze gone. She wanted bronze in her arms. But there were no arms. She knew not of arms. So she only hovered – but not really, because there was no such thing as hovering – her set distance away from the bronze.

Afraid. Irrational fear had settled over her like a blanket. Not of bronze, but of what it meant. The side-effects. Surely bronze knew? Did bronze Know?

She didn't!

There was only black now. The colors had fled, leaving her to spiral downward into the darkness, which was not really darkness, because now there was nothing.

And suddenly she was falling, surfacing. And suddenly she no longer Knew… and she didn't remember Knowing when she woke.

~x~

Bella could tell that Alice was talking. She sensed her birdlike, tinkling voice, subconsciously, like you would be aware of the ringing in your ears, but only if you purposely thought about it. Right now, Alice was like the ringing in her ears.

If these dreams kept up… dammit, she'd need a shrink. It had only been two nights, and her eyes were bloodshot, dry, and heavily lidded. She knew it wasn't from lack of sleep, but from sheer, inexplicable exhaustion. She feared a mental breakdown, one stronger than the fit of giggles-from-nowhere that had happened yesterday, so she trudged to her classes without much motivation. Bella had relegated her tedious school-related tasks to the part of her brain that handled the automatic things, like breathing and blinking, and on the outside she looked like she was there. But if you looked into her eyes and really saw, you would know her reality wasn't in Washington. She was visiting the blue-violet mists, all the while wondering why she felt so altered and obscure.

~x~

It was so dirty here.

Edward winced as a balding man with a faux-leather briefcase whirred past him, talking into a cell phone. Filthy. His words were not Italian. He recognized them as British English, though he could barely understand them. The man spoke shorter, more blatantly, more crudely than he was used to hearing. He didn't care for the English language. The words and phrases diminished the meanings behind their sounds, butchering the syllables so that they were superficial and ineloquent. It was the complete opposite of Italian, which flowed with a musical cadency, falling easily from the lips. When the voices in his head spoke Italian, it was pleasant – it was like listening to a lullaby when there were only a few, because the tone was always soothing and _pretty_, hinting at an old world culture. Now, with torrents of babbling Englishmen dispelling their thoughts into his mind, he was nauseous. It was a reminder that not everything on Earth was beautiful.

A tall, ramshackle building loomed eerily above him. It was moss green, five stories high, and seemed to be constructed of smooth concrete from a distance, only to find upon closer inspection that the thick paint was chipped and flakey, revealing old grey bricks underneath. The only windows that were visible were in the front, and no light escaped them. It appeared abandoned, except for the people walking in and out of the small, crooked black door that tottered precariously on its hinges when opened too fast or too roughly.

Jenks. England.

He could taste his disgusting thoughts in the air, their source located on the top story, in the center.

Edward knew very well that he couldn't just walk in and ask Jenks for what he wanted wearing a pair of worn grey sweats, a dirty black t-shirt, and no shoes. He had tucked a white button-down shirt into a pair of black slacks, donning a violet striped tie at the last minute. It was formal and uncomfortable, so he had unbuttoned the sleeves, rolled them up to his elbows and loosened the tie. This place was shabby enough for him to get away with it. He also smelled of saltwater after swimming to the British Isles, but it was not an offensive smell.

With purpose, he strode into the lobby, bypassing the cheaply upholstered sofas and imitation wooden coffee tables to the mousy, lank-haired secretary. He used his broken English to communicate with her, making eye contact easily, unhindered by the dimness of the light cast by the overhead lamps.

"Tell Mr. Jenks that Edward Masen is here to see him," he said shortly. He had a gentle, barely-there Italian accent. It took the harsh sting out of the language, but it didn't add any beauty, instead wrapping its ugly sound in pretty packaging.

The secretary's thoughts were incoherent, having an ordinary one-track mind. Her small hazel eyes were wide, taking him in, and her gaping mouth revealed a set of yellowing, horse-like teeth.

_My God . . . he's so gorgeous . . . oh my, his eyes are violet! Ah . . . what I wouldn't do to . . . ._

He smirked. If only she could see the inside of him.

Missing a beat, she replied, "O-okay," before picking up a landline and dialing the zero.

"Mr. J-Jenks, sir, someone's here to see y-you," she stuttered, darting her eyes back and forth between him and a pad of sticky notes on her cluttered desk.

_Should I give him my number . . . ?_

She didn't notice Edward shake his head, for which he was grateful. How would he have explained he was answering her thoughts?

He heard the voice on the other end, complaining.

_Does he have an appointment? _Jenks asked angrily, his annoyance apparent. His voice filtered down from the fifth story, a half a second earlier than his voice over the phone.

The secretary glanced at something on her computer monitor, then said guiltily, "No . . . ."

_Then why do I care?_

"My name," Edward mouthed to her. She hurriedly addressed the receiver, "His surname is Masen, sir, if that means anything . . . Edward Masen."

Twenty yards above him, he heard a heartbeat quicken, a loud gulp, and the tenor of a bad man's thoughts.

_He's . . . he's still . . . oh, fucking hell . . . ._

Jenks now sounded intimidated rather than intimidating.

_What are you waiting for? Send him up! _he screeched. Even if Edward's hearing had been exponentially less acute, he still would have been able to hear Jenks' voice from where he was standing.

"Right away, sir," the secretary said, hastily placing the receiver back in its cradle and making helpless gestures with her hands in the direction of the elevator.

"I'm so sorry, sir. The lift is broken, I'm afraid, but the stairs are right over there . . . . He's waiting for you on the top floor."

_And I'll be waiting for _you_ when you come down . . . oh, swoon . . . ._

He nodded absently, already following the sound of Jenks' rapidly accelerating heartbeat.

~x~

Alice had Bella by the elbow. She was dragging her to the lunch room at a brisk pace underneath a churning, ocean sky that had collapsed in upon itself, using the overhangs on the sides of the buildings to shield them from the rain. Whoever planned the layout of Forks High School clearly had no brains – who would build a school with disconnected buildings and unprotected walkways in the rainiest town of the United States? Everyone was clinging to the brick walls, looking like they were scaling ledges, trying to stay dry. It was ridiculous. Some people had completely given up on the prospect of keeping the water from drenching their clothes and ambled slowly towards their destinations, unaffected by the downpour. She would have been one of those people had Alice not attached herself to Bella's arm with a vice-like grip.

_Jasper, Jasper, Jasper, _was all Bella heard from her, and she wished Alice would leave her alone. She needed to think.

They were now enclosed in the concrete cinderblock box that was the cafeteria, Alice marching and Bella trudging towards a different table from the one they usually sat at, the one where Jacob was stationed. Alice flagged Angela down and waved her over. Soon they were situated in a dark corner of the building close to Jasper's and Emmett's table.

What a coincidence.

"You two look awful," Alice intoned, right down to business, sitting across from she and Angela. Alice was taking in Bella's fuck-off attitude, which was written clearly across her face, then quickly moving on to observe Angela's squinty, pink eyes and the swollen red button that used to be her nose. Angela was wiping her sleeve across it periodically, sniffling wetly.

"Really," Angela deadpanned, scowling at the table. Side by side, they could have been sisters in their misery, especially when compared to the bright-eyed Alice Brandon.

Bella shook her head, clearing it of daydreams. Angela leaned on Bella's shoulder, having given up trying to hold her head up any longer. She pressed her cheek to the crown of Angela's hair and closed her eyes.

"Bel-_la,_" Alice whined, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so I-don't-give-a-fuck today? You don't even have an excuse to be so sulky, not like Angela . . . and by the way, honey, you should be at home. You're a God-awful mess right now. Is it Jacob? That ass wipe . . . . What's up with him, did you piss him off? You've been so weird, I mean, it's not even you're normal-weird, you're just not _there . . . . _Are you okay? Did something happen with Charlie?"

She waited for Bella to answer her series of questions, and Bella waited for the silence to be filled with Alice's chatter again. When that didn't happen, she opened one eye and looked at her warily.

"Do you really expect me to remember all those questions you just asked me, Alice?" she mumbled, and set her head down on the table, trying to avoid her pout. Angela lost her balance and her head lolled onto Bella's back. "Sorry, Ange," she muttered into the table. It came out muffled.

"Okay, I'll ask one at a time," Alice said slowly. "Yes or no?"

"M'kay." It wasn't like Alice to make a compromise. She snatched at her offer.

"All right . . . are you terminally ill?" she joked, and Bella lifted her gaze. Alice was grinning from ear to ear. Looking her straight in the eye, dead-serious, Bella nodded her head.

Her oddly childlike eyes grew impossibly rounder and her mouth formed a small "o". She was shaking her head, "Bella, for real? I'm . . . oh God, I'm sorry –"

Bella chuckled, the first time in two days. "S'okay, Alice. I was kidding. JK, and all that."

Her breath came out in an audible _whoosh_. "Right. I guess that isn't really something you joke about anyway. Is something going on in your family? With Charlie?"

"Um, no. Not that I know of. Really, Alice, to tell you the truth, I don't even know why I'm like this right now," she mused. It was the most she'd said in a while, and her voice cracked in a few places. "I mean, there's nothing really wrong – but there's nothing really right, either."

Alice looked at her sympathetically, and Angela sneezed into Bella's hoodie.

"Oopsie – sorry, Bells . . . ." She was wiping Bella's back off with her sleeve. She wasn't positive about whether Angela was making it cleaner or just smearing more germs into the cloth, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

Bella sighed. "I'm fine." It was a lie, through and through.

~x~

Jenks' office took up half of the floor, and while it wasn't very high-end, it was more tastefully done than the rest of the building. It was all white and chrome and dark cherry wood, stained whichever color that decided to leak through the huge west-facing glass wall that absorbed the sunset and provided a view of industrial Manchester. Antique money was framed in silver along the painted walls, and sitting behind a large wooden desk in a white leather rolling chair was an old grey man much too small to fill it out. His handlebar mustache quivered and his entire frame shook.

"Mr. Masen," Jenks greeted in a high, nasally voice. American. "Please, sit down." He motioned towards a white metal bench with black cushions across from his desk, and Edward made his way towards it, but he did not sit.

"I'd prefer to stand, thank you."

_What – why . . . ? Italian . . . ?_

His thoughts were scrambled eggs – beaten and whisked and fried. Edward was frustrated. Surely not all humans became flustered when he made an appearance?

"All right, then." The mask he wore hid his emotion well. He wondered if this man played poker. "What can I do for you, then?"

"Well, I would think it'd be obvious," he cheeked, smirking, seeing his face backwards through Jenks' eyes. Jenks was remembering Edward, but a different Edward, from a different time, a different place. An Edward that had been born in Chicago in 1901.

Jenks didn't hear him.

"Forgive me, sir, but you seem very familiar . . . ."

_But different . . . so, so different . . . . _

He was taking in the color of his eyes. Perceiving his impossible youth. Wondering at his accent. And all the while . . . knowing.

_How? How?_

"You don't need to know how, Jenks," he snapped, and now Jenks' mask had melted away, for good, exposing him for the coward he was, and he was realizing, and he knew . . .

He knew Edward's secret.

Now he was asking aloud, "How . . . ?"

But it was a new 'how', and Edward gave him a similar answer.

"It's not your business. I need a birth certificate, an ID, a driver's license . . . . Are you writing this down?"

And now he was jittery, anxiously scratching a fountain pen against a white legal pad, looping letters together sloppily. Scared.

"I'm willing to pay extra if you can find and buy a house for me. I will reimburse the cost, at whatever the price."

"Where, Mr. M-Masen?" he stammered, and Edward was tired of people being so damn nervous.

"Washington."

It felt right.

~x~

**A/N**

**Let's keep this short and sweet, shall we?**

**First, go read Ars Moriendi by vanilladoubleshot. If I hadn't read it, Bella's dreams wouldn't be in this chapter. After that, read ALL of stella luna sky's fics. ALL of them made me cry. Fucking ALL of them.**

**Second, when you're done with that, go check out Well, This Sucks: Life According to Seth by Krumcake. It made me laugh so hard I threw up, no joke. And I was her thousandth review XD**

**mhm. like, u totes got 2 read dis shit, 4realz, lol, hah!AHahhAahahH11!1!11**

**Yeah? Yeah?**

**Yeah. Fucking love you, ladies (:**

**Are there any guys out there? If you do happen to be a guy, I'd love to know. Cas that shit's just interesting.**

**That wasn't really short and sweet, was it?**


	5. five

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**Okay, so you know how, wherever you go, no matter what you do, the authors up on here are always groveling at your feet, begging for reviews?**

**Yeah, well . . . this is me groveling.**

**I know, I know. It gets old. But high review numbers, for some reason, commandeer traffic. Like, for real. And I'm just kind of desperate to share what I have with the world. I don't want notoriety, and I definitely don't want money. Heck, I just want people to click. But sadly, on this site, most people don't care about what I have to say unless the review count is significant – and maybe not even then.**

**Anyway, to make up for that shitload of pathetic begging, I'm gonna lay a couple recs on ya.**

_**Legendary**_**, by WhatsMyNomDePlume – I ate that shit up. It's got my two favorite Edwards in it – Nerdward and Jerkward.**

_**January**_**, on Twilighted, by owenic – it gives me the warm and fuzzies. The first month, canon, after Breaking Dawn lets off. Lotsa citrus, hee (:**

_**Dream a Little Dream**_** and **_**Charlie Swan: Terminal Bachelor **_**by .ingenue – really short, but they're worth your time. Both made me cry just a little.**

**Everything by Pastiche Pen, but mainly **_**The Nymph and The Waterfall **_**and **_**If Love Could Light a Candle. **_**Nymph is funny, in a perverted, psycho kind of way, and Candle is really, really sexy. And dark. And mmmm.**

**Oh, and you know that one movie, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio – Inception? It was amazing. A bunch of hot smart people running around with guns in people's dreams. Extremely complicated, and the worst fucking cliffhanger ever, but it's definitely worth that ten dollar movie ticket.**

~x~

**Chapter Five**

**Resentment**

~x~

_Temper gets you into trouble . . . _

_ . . . but pride is what keeps you there._

~x~

Three mornings in a row, Bella woke from her nightmares screaming. Not the best way to start the day.

Charlie would rush in from the next room, panting just as loud as she. He'd have in his shaking hand the fully-loaded shotgun he kept close on his bedside table, and he would crouch low, his knees bent, scanning the room with a steely eye. The eye of a cop. The first night, she cowered beneath the sheets, scared even more shitless that a strange man with a gun had just burst into her room. But then she had realized it was only Charlie, and he was worried because she'd screamed. She had to catch herself so she didn't shout out again.

And, while Bella appreciated her dad's immediate reaction to protect, he was just making everything worse. He couldn't shoot at her dreams with a gun, or beat them with a baseball bat, or chase them away with hot chocolate and funny faces.

The intensity of the dreams was what made them frightening. The colors. The beauty. The absolute _conviction_ that what she knew in her fantasyland was all that would ever be, all that ever had been. And then the realization that all of it was a lie. How could they all be a lie? How could they? As she fell into the blackness that was, in actuality, the real world, she would begin to scream, because the sensation of having a body when she'd thought – when she'd _known _ - there was no such thing, was excruciatingly painful.

Her body was on fire, set cruelly aflame. Her fingertips burned white-hot, bright-sharp, and the heat scalded her cuticles, her fingernails. The backs of her eyelids turned from pink to orange as she squeezed them tighter and tighter, her heart threatening to beat its way out from underneath her ribcage, and in these moments she could have easily begged for death if it were not for the tortured cries that leaked steadily from between her clenched teeth. This pain . . . this pain, it could not be fiction. It was worse every time. This pain was so real she could name a color for each type. White, for the burn. Red, for the blood. Black, for when the pain became too unbearable . . . for peace.

Blue for the light. Purple for the glow.

And bronze . . . for the fear.

Fear of finding out, of not knowing. Fear of . . . of wanting what was not hers, and of never having it, and of being a coward not to steal it while she had the chance. She couldn't give the fear a name, and she cried even more, the rational part of her wondering w-what the f-fucking hell was wrong with her.

Bella thanked whoever was up there, on the third day, that it was Saturday, and she stumbled into the bathroom to wash from her eyes the sleep that had sealed them shut.

Her reflection greeted her when she first opened them.

Her . . . reflection.

Her . . . ?

A strangled sob escaped her lips – who was this? Who was this, staring back at her? The face reflected her shock, her disbelief, so perfectly, but that was clearly not her.

It resembled her a little bit . . . with the soft, heart-shaped face. The small, round nose, sloping gently at the bridge. The ears tipped red with the all-consuming anger she'd come to know very well the past few days. The hair flowing gently over her shoulder blades, tapering to a blunt point that grazed the small of her back. She examined the hands, which were chalky white, devoid of life, hanging limp, forgotten. The eyebrows drew together at the same time hers did, but she couldn't think of this reflection as her.

The lips were full, the epitome of seduction, not thin and pale like hers. The hair, while still the same length, was no longer rat brown and pin straight – it ran in rivulets of cascading chocolate waves, Atlantis for the Godiva chocolatier. Thick black lashes fanned, dark and full, around wide, staring eyes.

But the eyes!

The eyes were bright and inquisitive, when you looked past the fear that clouded them over. They captured her heart, her soul, and her mind. She was an open book. Just like Bella.

But, while Bella's were a dull, lifeless brown, hers were rich and dark, flecked with warm cinnamon and shining gold.

_Me. That's me._

She was… beautiful.

Had she even looked in a mirror in the past week? She couldn't remember – the entire time she'd been battling with the depression that threatened to overtake her, using all of her energy to beat it back with a metaphorical stick. She wasn't one to spend hours in the bathroom. She usually settled for just brushing her hair and teeth and taking a shower. In her semi-catatonic state, she'd spent even less time in here, not the least of which had been spent staring vainly at her own reflection. Shouldn't she be hideous right now, after a night of tossing and turning and dreaming?

"Shit! _Shit!_" she was cursing, using all of her lungs and all of her strength, louder than her petit frame might suggest. She was screaming again, but it was different, and they were screams of rage and not of pain, and tears were falling over her smoother, creamier cheeks, carving wet trails over the hot, red-apple blush that had materialized in her anger. This was ridiculous. This was . . . . "_Shit_!" This wasn't her! Who the fuck _was _she? What the hell was going on? And why the _fuck _hadn't she noticed?

Where had all this shit come from? And why in the _fucking _hell was she_ excited_?

Even with the tears, and her anger, and her denial, and her beauty, and the star . . . her eyes – Bella's eyes – were brightly lit with anticipation, despite the fear.

What the fuck? There was nothing to fucking anticipate!

She picked up the hairbrush that had been set on the counter and threw it at the mirror, shattering it into dozens of shiny glass shards that tinkled and chimed as they hit the cold tile floor, one by one. And in those shards, she saw raindrops fling mini rainbows against the walls like tiny prisms, scattered diamonds sparkling in the intense sunlight, blue comets trailing ice and space rock, and shooting stars flying hot and fast through the universe, so fast they catch fire.

~x~

Only two weeks touching Earth, and he was back in the clouds.

The huge metal machine roared and hummed loudly around him, creating a nice distraction from the irritating dreams that were poking and prodding at his mind. Edward was surrounded by dozens of softly snoring humans, and he was forced to pretend he was sleeping too, when what he really wanted to do was push the pilots out of the cockpit and land this damn plane already. He almost regretted not closing the long distance by swimming across the ocean himself. He'd had enough flying to last him two hundred lifetimes, and now he had no other alternative but to endure this torture for another five hours.

Edward envied these people. He wanted so badly to be able to sleep – to have his own dreams, mostly, but also to know what it was like. How did one just . . . fade away? Shut down? Retreat into one's own mind? A part of him was glad he didn't have to waste a third of his precious time here unconscious, but there was a yearning he couldn't just stow away and ignore. He hadn't recognized it before, but now, amongst a crowd of slumbering people, it was brought to the forefront.

Sleep was impossible for him, but it would have been welcome at that particular moment. Edward was exhausted, both physically and mentally, from the substantial amount of raiding he had to do to compensate for the sizeable sum of money his requests had racked up.

The headlines had been all over the abrupt, unexplainable crest in the crime rates. The police were still scratching their heads.

And the culprit was already halfway across the Atlantic, none the wiser.

It didn't matter. A week later, he had "official" documents in hand. His name was Edward Anthony Masen, born June 20, 1992. He was eighteen years old. He had an American driver's license. Both of his parents were deceased. And a brand new Aston Martin Vanquish sat in the driveway of his three-story Victorian mansion, just three miles outside of Forks, Washington.

~x~

Charlie had never questioned Bella's motives as to why she had broken the mirror. He was fidgety around her – he avoided eye contact and addressed Bella nervously, treating her like a ticking time bomb. What he didn't know was that he had no reason to be so timid – not only had she thrown the hairbrush at the mirror, but also her frustration, and it had broken into pieces like the glass that still lay on the bathroom floor.

She was acting like a petulant child. During the days that followed, she did not once look into a mirror. She avoided the windows and closed the curtains over them at night so that she could not see her altered reflection in the darkened glass panes. There was no discernable reason as to why she was acting so depressed, so she wrote it off as hormones. Now that she had pinned a somewhat believable explanation on her behavior, she could try to control it.

This left her feeling like shit when she thought about Alice and Angela.

Over the course of the next week, she tried to make it up to them, and she could literally see the relief in their concerned faces. Yeah, of course they'd be glad Bella wasn't turning into an obnoxious, emo bitch. After the relief, though, came the inevitable surprise over the subtle, unexplainable changes to her facial features. If they noticed, they wisely didn't say anything . . . because when someone did, she would stiffen, and her weird reaction would stifle any new conversation.

Bella might have gone overboard with the whole making-it-up thing, though. She actually paid attention when Alice talked about Jasper, and what Alice said surprised her; she and Jasper were on speaking terms now, and they'd progressed to a first-name basis. Bella despised the moody bastard – he gave her dad more than enough trouble, seeing as Charlie was Chief of Police here in Forks – but she couldn't help but be glad for Alice. Maybe now her pestering would be stemmed. It was about time. She'd been obsessed with him for over a month, ever since the beginning of the school year.

Angela, if at all possible, was even sicker come Monday, and didn't even bother to show up Tuesday. On Thursday, Bella texted her, and she had replied saying she had a fever and probably wouldn't be back in school for a while.

Dealing with Jacob required the most effort. Bella chickened out almost every time she thought about talking to him, and she'd driven herself to and from school in her truck, disappointed every time she saw that the Rabbit was not parked in its usual spot behind the cruiser. She and Alice still sat at the table in the corner, and Jacob still sat with his own friends across the cafeteria. She felt miles and miles from where she should have been . . . but, even under the circumstances, it didn't feel like the distance had anything to do with Jacob.

The week flew by, and the only times she would ever lose control were right after she'd wake up, still smothering her screams with her pillow so that Charlie wouldn't hear. So far, she'd been successful. The random giggling attacks snuck up on her often, and when she felt one coming on, she would rush to the bathroom and splash cold water on her porcelain face. It would drip, wet and obvious, over her closed eyes, and the mirror's presence over the sink would be so powerful, making the urge to open her eyes so irresistible, that she would run from the bathroom faster than she had run in.

Pride was what compelled Bella to approach Jacob in the parking lot on Friday after school. If he was too much of a coward to approach her and apologize, she would do the approaching for him. She'd pictured this moment in her head over and over. Her, asking what the hell his problem was. Him, begging for forgiveness. Her, with all the power.

Which was why she definitely did not expect to be pushed roughly against the hood of his car and have his tongue jammed down her throat.

For a moment, she was ecstatic. Two full weeks without his kiss, without his touch. She melted into his massive frame, and her body was bowed backwards against the machine as he pressed harder into her.

But then she realized this wasn't how it was supposed to fly.

She shoved him off her, and while the absence of his kiss resonated through her body, filling her with elation, the all-consuming anger was there again, and it was stronger than it had ever been.

~x~

They were landing in Florida, at Jacksonville International Airport. The babbling brook of English that flowed through his head wasn't as harsh now – the American accent was easier to listen to, ignoring the fact that there were now thousands of voices rather than dozens penetrating his mind. He should have felt at peace.

But now . . . now, there was rage. So pungent his head pounded at its strength, the blood surging through his veins like agitated magma, threatening to surface. Edward was furious, but at what he knew not of, and so he stood amidst the moving human crowd, his fists balled tight and his teeth clenched so hard his jaw throbbed, aching. He wasn't used to pain. It was unpleasant.

Somewhere . . . somewhere, inside, he knew that this fury was not his own. There was joy buried underneath it, and the experience was peculiar. His joy fought to escape, and when Bella's passionate hate passed, it would rise. He knew it would.

Edward was getting closer.

~x~

"How . . . how _dare _you! You _asshole_!"

She shoved him again, and to her satisfaction he stumbled back two steps with a look of shock on his handsome face. He shouldn't have been so shocked. He had it coming.

Jacob had Bella in his arms again, and he was leaning in. Desperate. He was mumbling, and all she heard was, "So beautiful . . . ."

"Are you even serious?" She pushed harder this time, and he recoiled as she stiffened at his mention over her appearance. How could he even think . . . ?

The shock was replaced with a face full of hard indifference, and she knew this face. He was hiding from her.

"No? Are you fucking crazy?" he sneered, and his true feelings were nowhere to be found.

His remark hit home. Was she crazy? Hah, she had surely been acting like she was. So why should she deny it?

"Maybe I _was_ crazy. Maybe I was crazy for _you_," Bella said quietly, and she wished she had the guts to shout it at the top of her lungs. However, she saw that her calm had permeated his shell just as well as brashness would have, because he narrowed his eyes at her. She continued, "But that's in the past now, Jacob. You've ignored me for half a month, and I haven't done a thing. If you're going to treat me like that, I don't see how we can . . . you know."

Her awkward words didn't thaw him – they hardened him. He drew himself up to his full six-and-a-half foot height, and if she hadn't known any better, she would have found him intimidating.

He said nothing, and his silence spoke louder than any words he could have uttered for her sake. Instead, he walked around her to the driver's side door, and she stepped aside and watched him drive away.

The parking lot was empty, save for Bella's Chevy and her best friend's Volvo. She ran, faster than she ever had, into Alice's arms, and her pretense melted. She was still the frustrated, hormonal teenage girl that couldn't keep her unstable emotions in check. Was it too much to ask for, to be able to walk away with her dignity left intact?

It was all she wanted. So, naturally, she couldn't have it.

~x~

**A/N**

**Hello, my lovelies!**

**Some of you might have noticed I'm taking the Cullen account plotline out, if you're still around. If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, then you're obviously not one of those people (:**


	6. six

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: This is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**Let's clear some shit up, yeah? Eddie ain't a vamp. Jasper and Emmett are human, and they're nothing like Edward. You get to choose whether or not Bella's a virgin, because I don't give a shit. And Edward isn't the only one who's different – you all are forgetting about Bellie here! They're both equally freakish and supernatural. They're two fragments of a godlike Soul personified – not vampires, or demons, or angels. And **_**definitely **_**not human. Nuh uh. Humans are weird.**

**Oh, and another thing.**

**My Beta, PeepToe, is the fucking awesomest, bajillionest (?) beta thingthing ever. Like . . . ever. I have to make up words to describe her awesomeness. And I am reluctant to admit anything is awesome – even Madonna, bitches – so that admission right there should knock your socks off.**

**You know, I've never really gotten that euphemism, knocking your socks off . . . I mean really? What if you're not wearing socks? Is that even the correct way to use the word euphemism?**

**Shit, I talk too much.**

~x~

**Chapter Six**

**Recognition**

Chicago was awake.

A smooth, black sheet cloaked the city that was not sleeping yet, and there were no stars to break the dark into pieces. Car horns blared, and the ever-present thoughts that were not his folded him into their busy embrace. Dreams floated past like soft gusts of air, in one ear and out the other. While they were the deepest, most unguarded thoughts a human could have, they often did not make much sense.

The remaining voices were mostly of bitter tenor, their sources the drunken homeless men that cluttered the sidewalks, the rest the distracted tones of businessmen that walked at brisk paces, flagging taxis whilst talking into small, silver cell phones.

Edward wandered through the city with his backpack slung over his shoulder and tried to remember his life here.

There was nothing familiar about the crowd of walking people he pushed through, and he saw no tall skyscrapers in his memories. Chicago was taller, brighter, louder, and was much more crowded than he expected, though why he had any expectations at all was beyond him. He was craning his neck, trying to catch glimpses of the uppermost stories. He had no desire to go to the tops of these buildings – the view would only remind him of where he should have been, a reminder he didn't need at the moment.

Bella was really only two days away if he ran at top speed, and her pull was stronger than ever. He could taste her essence on his tongue when he searched for it, and if he didn't move at a constant pace, he felt as if he was being tugged by an invisible rope that was wrapped around his middle. Beckoning him. If Edward moved in the opposite direction of the tug, it would intensify, and his feet would stop of their own accord. The pull was not only a mental thing now – it was physical, literally stopping him in his tracks when he resisted its power. Hell, if he even so much as faced east his legs would freeze and lock into an uncomfortable, rigid position that left him straight-backed and motionless until he consciously decided to follow the pull again. There was no turning back.

Edward wanted to feel guilty for being so excited, so selfish. The remorse ate away at him while he continued to walk at an automatic pace through the crowd of Chicagoans. He attempted not to acknowledge it, but the task was difficult. The birthplace of his most recent life was the perfect distraction.

Especially when someone recognized him.

~x~

Bella now knew her life for what it was.

She had no free will.

Who's to say her life hadn't already been arranged to coincide with the fate of the Earth, so that everything would play out smoothly? Who's to say she wasn't only here for the ride, to fill that slot, so that the end would come exactly as planned? Who's to say she wasn't living vicariously?

Because, obviously, her life was out of her control.

She could only sit back and watch, on the outside looking in, as she jumped and laughed and danced around her room, the excitement now unbearable. Bella was Atlas, holding the weight of the world on her shoulders, and her burden was her impatience. She couldn't wait. Why were they making her wait?

She'd stand off to the side, tight-lipped and grim-faced with her arms crossed over her chest, as she watched herself give hug after hug to Charlie, who was beginning to get whiplash.

Bella's body, without her consent, did the happy dance with Alice when Jasper asked her out, while inside she looked on disapprovingly.

Not a single tear was shed for Jacob.

Oh, she had absolutely no desire to cry for Jacob . . . but even if she had, she still wasn't physically _capable_. She was a puppet, and the strings' commands were becoming harder and harder to defy. After school, she would find herself driving past her house, continuing down the street that led her east, following the strings. Once she'd found that she'd left the Olympic Peninsula entirely before she came to her senses. Charlie wasn't very happy when she returned home that night after midnight.

It just . . . it didn't add up!

Bella paced back and forth across her messy bedroom floor, tugging at her hair and moaning in frustration. She knew it was only a matter of time that she would no longer be the one that was in control of her actions. Again. Was she bipolar? Schizophrenic? Depressed? Nothing made sense anymore! And whenever she came anywhere close to finding an answer, she would circle back to her nightmares, which were becoming more and more vivid as time progressed. All she could remember of them were the colors . . . the beautiful colors. But, no matter how hard she tried, even though she knew that the colors weren't the only shocking aspect of the dreams, her memories escaped her. Something new had cropped up amidst the colors . . . but, in her waking moments, the details would trickle through her fingers like sand, and she would be left annoyed, wanting, and slightly disturbed. Her mind was blocking out the pain and the anguish, but that didn't surprise her. She had no power over her body or mind anymore. She fought, with all she had, to regain her will – but there was no fighting it. It was impossible.

Everyone thought Bella had gotten over whatever it was that had overcome her four weeks ago, but the fact of the matter was that that side of her was being smothered by something completely other. She wanted to smack herself back into awareness, slap this . . . _thing _out of her. But the only chance she ever got to do that was by seeing herself in a mirror, and she avoided those like the plague. The rearview mirror in her truck was destroyed, courtesy of her phone. The one over her dresser, shattered, thanks to her fist. One in the girls' bathroom at school, second from the left, broken beyond repair. It was her Biology textbook's fault.

She despised mirrors. They revealed to her what she wanted most to forget. It was bad enough that Bella was not entirely herself on the inside, but the mirrors showed that she was nearly unrecognizable on the outside, too. Her skin was pale and cool and inhuman. Her hair was taking on a richer tone, and it didn't matter if it was exposed to rain and humidity and her tossing at night – it stayed in its perfect state, immaculate with not a strand out of place, tresses falling in thick, dark waves down to her waist. She didn't notice anything past this – all she saw were her eyes.

Bella's eyes were not brown anymore.

She would look away too fast to find out what color they actually were. She was afraid to know.

What if they were bronze?

~x~

She was staring at Edward through a window from the inside of a coffee shop. Her head was cocked to the side.

He could not hear her thoughts.

Instead, he only had a vague impression of what she was pondering. There was confusion, swirled with curiosity, and he could tell she was contemplating whether she should wave him over. He stood still, people swarming around him. The ones that came close left a wide berth between them. They, subconsciously, did not want to come closer.

The woman was young, probably in her early thirties. She regarded him through the lenses of her black, rectangular glasses with intelligent brown eyes that asked silent questions. Wavy, caramel blond hair tumbled down her back, windblown and swept across her forehead, and she was frowning at him, distorting her pretty face and making the skin above her eyebrows wrinkle in concentration. She was unnaturally beautiful, even for a human, and she held herself with a grace and poise Edward hadn't seen anyone possess since his arrival. She was dressed to the nines.

He forced himself to take the steps towards the coffee shop. It was difficult, fighting Bella's magnetic influence, and he walked slowly because of it. He paused at the door. Torn.

He just wanted to see her. To assuage his curiosity – absolve his baseless doubts.

So he stepped inside. Just for a minute.

~x~

"Would you mind if I sat with Jasper today?"

Alice was standing behind her usual chair, a tray in her hands, looking at Bella with a worried glint in her eyes. Bella attempted to hide her disappointment, but she could tell she failed, because Alice quickly backtracked.

"I mean, you could come with me . . . if you'd like?"

Bella didn't want to impose . . . but what was she supposed to do? Sit by herself?

"Is that okay?" she asked uncertainly, standing up slowly. Alice didn't look like she regretted asking. She nodded and said, "Yeah, of course," and Bella followed her the short distance to the table where Jasper and Emmett sat.

They were sitting beside each other and looked hopelessly bored as they stared off into space, but awareness crept back into their gazes as she and Alice approached the chairs across from them. Alice sat down without any sign of the hesitation she had earlier – Bella, however, wasn't very comfortable sitting herself down uninvited in front of the giant behemoth that was Emmett. She danced nervously in front of the chair, a poor imitation of Alice, and asked, "Do you guys mind?"

Emmett was peering up at Bella with dark, interested eyes – she could see her reflection in them. She looked away.

"Nope," he answered, popping the _p_ and continuing to scrutinize her. It was the first word he'd ever spoken to Bella.

"All right." She hung her bag over the back of her chair and sank cautiously into the seat.

Jasper and Alice had the tray between them, sharing a slice of pizza and a lemonade. They weren't saying anything, but rather appeared to be documenting each other with their stares. Alice was never so quiet. It made Bella uneasy.

Could today get any more awkward?

Emmett sat opposite her; she guessed they were stuck together. He was tapping his bottom lip thoughtfully and looking at her hands as they played with an apple, her staple.

He chuckled confidently. "A little jumpy, are we?"

She started at the sound of his voice and the apple went rolling across the table. He caught it easily. Nodded. Smirked. Fucking bit her apple.

"Hey . . . ," she began, but she instantly changed her mind. Best not to mess with those biceps. And it wasn't like she was even hungry to begin with.

Her eyes were glued to the tabletop and her hands. They were empty now, and she could only dispel her anxiety by twiddling her thumbs. Damn him.

"Bella, right?" he ventured around a mouthful of fruit. She looked up, but didn't make eye contact, instead taking in his physical attributes. He had a dimple in his chin that popped in and out as he chewed, and his jaw was square-shaped when it was not slack. His curly hair was growing out from a buzz cut; it made him seem larger. Bella felt so tiny and weak next to him. He was handsome . . . but scary. Very scary.

She nodded absently.

His laugh was loud and ricocheted through the cafeteria. Several heads looked up.

"You're a trip, Bella," he boomed. He was shaking. She could feel her brow furrow . . . what did she do?

Jasper and Alice did not seem to notice. They were communicating in a different way, trapped in their own little bubble, oblivious to everyone that surrounded them. Namely Emmett.

"You look so terrified!"

Hell, well now she was. She'd never heard this boy – no, man – utter a single word, and now she was fucking _vibrating_ as his sound waves travelled through her body, he was so damn loud!

She wrinkled her nose.

"Your expressions are priceless . . . shit, why didn't I start talking to you sooner? You're better than fucking cable!"

Bella rolled her eyes. She hadn't even said anything.

"Glad you think I'm so amusing," she muttered, clasping and unclasping her hands. She might have cracked a smile.

"Huh, well," he grinned, chewing lazily, and he laughed again. Quieter this time.

Bella grinned back. His smile was infectious, and his exaggerated mannerisms were funny, in a subtly obvious way.

She could get used to sitting here.

~x~

She played with a ring on her middle finger, but it wasn't a nervous habit. It was a way to deal with stress. Denial, strong and true, colored her obscured thoughts; Edward would know it anywhere. He wondered at it.

He didn't approach her, though. He watched her surreptitiously, moving slowly toward the line at the counter, ignoring the way her staring eyes seemed to draw solid lines into his back. He'd buy a coffee, and he'd sit in the corner there, near the plant – something he could hide behind while he watched her and dump his coffee into.

Edward wasn't sure why he was wasting his time here, under this leaky roof, breathing in the air that smelled of coffee beans, regarding a random blond through the corner of his eye while he waited in a line that wasn't moving to order a drink he couldn't drink. And all the while, Bella's pull was a siren call in the back of his head while he stood there, immobile, but he also felt another pull . . . toward this woman.

He needed some sort of explanation.

Her impenetrable mind was a curiosity. Something about her persona, about the vibes she gave off, blocked his access to her thoughts. He wanted to delve into her, and read her like a book.

But he couldn't.

Damn this slow line.

~x~

Their words surrounded her. She couldn't get away.

Teenagers gossip – Bella knew, she was one. But didn't they have anything better to talk about?

In the hallway, "Did you hear? Bella Swan was sitting with Emmett McCarty at lunch!"

In the cafeteria, "Bella Swan had a breakdown the other day, did you know that?"

During gym, "Have you seen Bella Swan's eyes? They've changed colors! Do you think they're colored contacts?"

The irritation was eating at her, and it was taking a toll on her tolerance. They weren't bothering to whisper behind their hands anymore – in fact, they spoke up when she passed them in the halls to ensure she heard their snarky comments about her hair, or her preferred seating arrangements, or her unexplained tears from the other day. She didn't need this.

On top of it all, Alice was starting to abandon her in favor of Jasper's heavy petting sessions, Angela was admitted to the ICU for double pneumonia, and Charlie was heaping a healthy dose of parental concern onto her plate. Bella was going to go completely apeshit.

Her appetite had fled. Anything that was considered edible triggered her gag reflex, and Charlie was even so bold as to ask if she was "sick". Bella didn't blame him. She considered the possibility – what with her mood swings, her change in appearance, her lack of hunger, and her screaming at night, she wouldn't be surprised if she was.

An empty feeling followed her when she was not overcome with the uncontrollable, illogical excitement, and even then, the emptiness still lingered beneath the surface. It mingled with the usual confusion and anger and denial, but it never rose to the top, always trumped by the anticipation.

Bella was fucking sick of this bullshit.

~x~

For almost an hour, they spied on each other from behind their untouched coffee. They both had somewhere they needed to be, but neither wanted to leave first.

She was an anomaly in his predictable journey. He was an enigma, and he seemed familiar.

But he had been fighting the tug for too long. It was becoming painful to stay frozen, and he was a little tired of the eyes the young girl behind the register was making at him. He threw his cup in the trash and stood to leave.

She was so fascinating. But he _needed _to go to Bella.

Edward chalked the mystery up to excitement and left the shop, glancing over his shoulder one last time at Renesmee Masen, his only granddaughter from his previous life.

~x~

**A/N**

**No more Wednesday updates, lovelies. I've gots me a life to live.**

**But I love you guys. You know the deal.**

**o, &omg, like, u totes got 2 read courting achilles by greeen goldfish, like, nowww. it's lyk, so fckin amazinggg.**

**I mean, it's a sequel to A War of Cynics, but I accidentally read Courting Achilles before it and it made sense. And it's ten times better anyway. Edward's a doctor in Africa with a god complex XD**


	7. seven

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**I was . . . busy?**

**Pshh, like y'all will believe that. Really, I have no excuse. Please forgive my lazy ass.**

**Te'song belongs to Rufus Wainwright. Is that how you spell it?**

~x~

**Chapter Seven**

**Reunion**

~x~

_And love's no cry you can hear at night_

_It's not somebody who's seen the light_

_It's a cold and it's a broken_

_Hallelujah_

_Hallelujah_

~x~

The dream started out as it usually did.

There was no purpose. No game. No ulterior motive.

She was with her colors again.

The indigo reached out in wispy, curling tendrils, dancing with the tumbling violet in a sea of black darkness. Iolite and sapphire blended perfectly with rich wine in a raging purple storm, twining and mixing and tangling together, then separating into two different masses again, playing and teasing, but never fully combining into one. Tanzanite tickled amethyst; lilac taunted aqua. And she . . . she floated in the middle.

There was peace here. There was nothing to live up to, no one to please. No history. No future. Only time – all the time in the universe. This was all she knew.

It was all she wanted to know.

But here . . . here is the point where a new color always arrives.

It is traumatic to have something completely alien introduced to you, without warning, especially when you don't know that your world is capable of change. What if all you knew was what you had? What if what you knew was all you needed?

Change would be scary. You would be frightened – but you wouldn't recognize the fear, because you've never felt it. You've only known happiness and tranquility. You would feel threatened, but you wouldn't recognize the threat until it was right in front of you.

Bronze was even more beautiful than her perfect colors. It was a shock of brightness, a foreign blossom against a dark canvas.

She didn't like it.

Now was usually the time she would wake up, screaming in agonizing, white-hot pain.

But she didn't. She wasn't scared this time. Uneasy, yes. Apprehensive, of course. But not scared.

She embraced the bronze. It swelled and quivered, rippling in a mass of shiny golden waves, as it crept slowly closer. Its blurry edges shifted and compacted. A new form was defined.

She was experiencing change. It was not so scary.

Bronze was shimmering silver now, shrinking and stretching and compressing.

New. Upright. Tall. Different.

Human.

All that was left of Bronze fell over the man's brow, obscuring his vision and blocking her view of his eyes. His hair was getting in his way, and she wanted to push it back. So she reached out – she had hands – and she smoothed the tousled mess from his forehead.

He took her into his arms, and they danced amongst their colors while she stared into his smoldering violet eyes.

~x~

He was running. Jagged-edged, dove grey stones crunched softly underfoot, scraping fruitlessly against his bare heels, which of course did not bleed. Shades of green and brown rushed past him and merged into one nature-colored blur. Dead leaves fluttered around his feet, the wind he created upsetting them from their resting places on the damp, mossy forest floor, and the earthy smells their flights stirred up flew into his nose with every breath.

_So close. So close._

The words were a mantra stuck on loop inside his head, slowly driving him to cross the line towards insanity. The only sounds that filled the silence were the quiet noises of the forest, his ragged intake of breath, and the strong, steady rhythm of his rapidly beating heart.

_So close. So close._

He could feel her. He could taste her.

The air vibrated at Edward's close proximity. He could see the particles moving franticly back and forth, feel them pulsing against him, the dust motes and tiny insects being tossed around on the small wind the movement created. The light refracted when it hit their connection that was now tangible, visible to his sensitive eyes. He followed it mindlessly. Let it guide him. He trusted it to lead him to where Bella was, because he was too far gone to search her out himself. He was reduced to instinct, to primal want, almost feral in his desire, and it was a frenzy. A conflagration. A cool, slow-burning, endlessly raging, all-consuming fire, and it licked and spread and climbed inside him, filling his limbs and taking up residence behind his eyes, his core its source. And while he burned, he continued to run. It hurt so bad. So good.

The best kind of pain.

~x~

The air was charged.

It shocked her awake.

The hair on Bella's body stood on end . . . the back of her neck tingled. She was restless. She had to move.

Honey and sun, on her tongue. Almonds and spring zephyr and musk, riding the imperceptible breeze through her nose. It was unfamiliar and wonderful and exhilarating, perfect in every way, yet flawed in its namelessness, an aroma that tickled her senses and urged her forward, and she had to follow it.

Somewhere, in the depths of her subconscious musings, she wondered what the hell was going on.

But that part of her mind had nothing to do with this. That part of Bella had no say, it didn't matter, she didn't care.

She didn't care.

_Follow the sun, and find home._

It was etched into her instincts, as deeply ingrained as the urge to blink and breathe.

She was rising from her unmade bed, finding her way to the front of the room by memory – it was too dark to see anything. Her arms held out in front of her, her eyes half-closed with sleep, she stumbled blindly through the door and down the stairs, careless as to whether she was being loud enough to wake Charlie up.

Charlie didn't matter.

_Find home._

The door clicked behind her, and she hit a wall of cool, chilly air. And before she was consciously aware of what she was doing, she was in her Chevy, turning the key in the ignition, and feeling the engine below her vibrate as it roared to life.

This fucking ancient truck wouldn't be able to go fast enough. So she took the key out.

Stepped out of the car.

Ran.

And she didn't trip, or fall, or lurch forward, or stagger back. Bella wasn't clumsy. She just . . . _ran. _And it was so, so good.

She was going faster than she ever remembered going. Her hair whipped about her face, like soft, whispered breaths against eager skin. It fanned out so far she could feel the gentle airstream rush past the nape of her neck, down the back of her shirt, between her shoulder blades, hitting her sensitive eardrums so that her head was buzzing. The grass was damp, and the dirt was mushy between her naked toes, but she didn't care. It didn't matter, she didn't care.

_Follow the sun._

The scent was so potent. Delicious, irresistible. Not like food, no – she could never eat this. Musk coated the inside of her cheek, honey-tinged air danced in and out of her flaring nostrils. Was it so strange that she could feel it? She could feel the sun, but it wasn't the heat or the warmth or the light that she felt – it was the taste. The essence. The flavor.

But not really. Was it so strange?

The leaves caressed her bare arms and legs, branches bent back after her abrupt contact and departure, leaving no marks, and all around her, the crickets sang.

Did she hear someone else?

The presence was so strong.

Every nerve was a livewire, fringed and frayed and exposed and alive, and a current was flowing through her, like she was caught in the midst of a silent electrical storm. It was so cliché . . . but so accurate. The blood was pounding behind her ears, her breathing increasing, and she could hear her heart. She could hear it.

_Tha-thump. Tha-thump._

_Follow the sun. Find home._

~x~

Their hearts beat together, to the same rhythm – harmonious, and perfectly in sync. One heart was stronger, more vital-sounding, while the other was lovely, delicate, and fragile.

Was she here? Was she close?

_So close. So close._

Yes.

Mass air displacement was all he needed to know his surroundings. He could close his eyes and know the frail leaves, whose miniscule veins he could trace with his eyes even in the dark, swayed back and forth from their semi-permanent perches, grazing the rough tree bark with a mild sliding sound. A stray bumblebee hovered over an open flower, poised to extract nectar, the rapid vibration of its thin wings making the air quiver around his fingertips. Smooth, round pebbles clattered quietly under the current of a lazily drifting stream, from which a herd of blissfully ignorant deer satiated their thirst, and he could feel their muscles work to swallow the water, despite his distance.

A shaking teenage girl hid behind a tall pine.

Her breath was broken and sporadic, hinting at a melodious voice Edward had yet to hear with his own ears.

How he wanted to hear her speak.

At the time, he was not worried about whether or not she would know him. He thought nothing of the black sheets of clouds that loomed in the distance, brewing in a way uncharacteristic even for the storms in Forks. He didn't care about damnation, about his prophesized fate to burn forever after in an undying, hellish blaze of flame – he was burning now. It was not unpleasant.

All Edward knew, at his recognition of her presence, was the other half of his transcendent Soul, and his insides twisted and turned as his being attempted to latch onto hers, where it belonged.

He wasn't mere bone and flesh and blood, breath and heartbeats and hormones, animated by the electrical pulses generated by an archetype human brain.

He was a tortured, pitifully crafted impression of a god, doomed to live and die a destiny he did not ask for and could not escape. And she was his refuge.

In Bella, Edward would find solace.

Love.

At this word a violent tremor moved down his spine, a frisson rocking through his body in wave after wave. His hands trembled. His breath was shallow. His toes curled tightly inward.

He was creeping forward, approaching a perfectly circular meadow of wildflowers that had grown, unrestrained, to reach past his knees. He was still relying on his sense of touch, too afraid to open his eyes and see that he might have imagined her being there.

She stopped breathing.

Was she afraid?

~x~

Bella was frozen. This had better not be another fucking nightmare. Because if this was a nightmare . . . she would be devastated.

He was there. The haunted man of her dreams, barely more than a boy, with the tormented eyes and the painful expression, storms brewing in the background. The man who had her in his ethereal hold not an hour ago, dancing with her in their rain colors for all of ten minutes before she'd woken, unable to fall back asleep. She wanted to cry.

He was too perfect.

How was she even able to see him? He was a hundred yards away, masked by the dark and hidden behind tangles of branches, partially concealed by the trunk of a tree. Bella knew it was him, though. His eyes were closed, but even without seeing the intense violet that had pierced, all-knowing, into her own eyes, she was positive it was him.

And then he was moving in her direction. Her breath caught in her throat.

His fingers were straight, but relaxed, spread apart and slightly forward, and he was gliding slowly through the flowers, breathing deeply through his nose. Shadows played across his face. They flickered below his auburn eyelashes and on his forehead underneath the beautiful, windblown mess that was his strangely colored hair. It was a color she'd never seen before – reddish-brown, but with copper and golden undertones.

Bronze.

Bella wanted to run her hands through it – this time, she wanted it to be real.

She needed to be sure he really existed.

_Come closer._

_Find home._

She inched her way around the tree she'd been hiding behind, hugging herself to it as if its concrete reality could reassure her that he, too, was actually there. She was trailing her fingers along everything within her reach, the bushes, the tall weeds, the low-hanging branches, all serving as subtle reminders that this wasn't a dream . . . . And then he stopped.

His palms were facing forward. His head was tilted up.

_Open your eyes, beautiful boy. I want to see you._

~x~

Clear, blue sky, the hidden sharp-sweet sunshine. Pine, evergreen fir, deciduous oak. The saccharine pollen that dotted the air. Tall grass, to his thighs. The smell of fresh rain.

It all paled in comparison to her freesia.

Her breathing had turned to a low hum, to match her heartbeat. There was the soft crunch of her feet on the wet ground, coming steadily closer, and the rustle of leaves as the branches bent down lower in her placid grasp.

He opened his eyes.

Astonishment.

Had he ever truly seen her?

Her face was framed with rich brown tresses, waving lightly down over her collarbone to graze her elbows . . . and Edward wanted to hold it all in one hand. Sweep it over her back, kiss the juncture between her neck and shoulder, and whisper behind her ear that he loved her. Feel her tense in surprise, then relax against him. Pull back and watch her large doe eyes widen with awe, trace his finger down her spine and splay his hand across her waist, pull her to him and hold her close and never let go. He wanted her to cling to his arms, for her to thread her thin fingers in his hair, feel her whisper against his cheek.

She was innocence exemplified, vulnerability personified. She was his quintessential lover – exquisite, lovely in every way. Infallible in her beauty, faultless in her exterior intellect. She unknowingly exuded sensuality, simply radiated curiosity, her wonder plainly written across her face, and he longed to know what she was thinking.

There was nothing there, though. The same as before Edward had come to Earth.

But it was completely natural to push that thought aside.

It was perfectly ordinary to cross the remaining distance to where she stood, immobile, only a few yards away.

And it wasn't unusual that Edward had her in his hold only seconds later. It was like she was molded to fit him perfectly – he could put his arm here, and be comfortable. He could place his hand there, and know she would like it.

He could feel his cheeks stretch to accommodate his smile, and it didn't feel out of place on his face, in spite of the fact he had not as of yet smiled so wide. She was still stunned, her large eyes growing increasingly larger, watching him with a bewildered expression that fit her naïveté so well he couldn't help but laugh – not a laugh borne of humor, or of fleeting amusement, but of long-due contentment. Happiness.

Edward bowed her against his body and cradled her fragile head with his hand, connecting his violet gaze to hers of shocking, liquid gold. Their lips were inches apart.

"Isabella Swan, you have no idea how long I've waited for you."

~x~

**I'm aware the sectioning might seem random.**

**Yes, it's all in third person . . . but it's third person limited, meaning you're only looking into one mind at a time. There's a method to my madness.**

**I love y'all. Thank you for putting up with my crazy, indecisive self. Next chapter goes up Wednesday, most likely. I know, I said no more Wednesday updates . . . but what can I say? Y'all should know me by now. I change my mind way too often.**


	8. eight

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me, myself, and I. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: This is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**I EMPHASIZE RELIGION. GO NOW IF THIS IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU.**

**PeepToe's the ah-mazing Beta. Bow down to her, she's… like… royalty!**

**Life's getting complicated as of late, lovelies. Please don't hold me to these recent rapid fire updates. Oh, and there's also that nagging-bitching-MOTHERflipping-god-I-feel-like-screaming-and-throwing-shit writer's block that's melded itself into my brain tissue, but . . . .**

**Watevs, nvm, lol, qweirusddgklb. Let's proceed.**

**Te'quote down there was plucked from Edward's mind – the **_**real **_**Edward (wait… no he's not real… oh crap, the bitches're gonna get me, shh!) – in Midnight Sun.**

~x~

**Chapter Eight**

**Rely**

~x~

_And by the way, I adore you . . . _

_. . . in frightening, dangerous ways._

~x~

For a fraction of a second, she could feel the sun on her skin. The sky was dark, the stars and the waning gibbous moon concealed by the typical expanse of dismal grey cloud . . . but she could feel the sun, in the form of his breath, and it smelled like the honey-almond-zephyr that had lured her from her dreams. Only now, the scent was more concentrated. She felt inebriated.

His hand was at the roots of her hair, and he was twining his long, gentle fingers securely into the strands there. His touch created a bizarre sensation, similar to how her tongue felt after rinsing with Listerine, and it trickled down her back in a way that would have been uncomfortable had the feeling not been caused by the warm, dry palm he placed at the base of her skull. She was bent backward into an unnatural position, one leg planted in the grass and the other suspended midair, sticking out awkwardly behind his knee, and her arms dangled loosely at her sides until she placed them unceremoniously onto his shoulders. He had her, so he wouldn't let her fall. It was second-nature to assume this.

And, while she was at a loss as to how he knew her name, why he was here, what it meant that he'd been waiting for her and whether or not he was being serious about that . . . all that mattered was that she was finally, finally, in his arms.

The basis from which she drew that "finally" was still unclear to her, but she had been reduced to much more uncomplicated thoughts. A side effect of his intoxicating smell, she guessed.

They were two lost people who had found each other – he was not the light at the end of her tunnel, and she was not his; rather, they were the glow that guided through darkness, flickering candlelight flames that veiled the daunting silence.

In Bella's state of simple marvel, all that registered was him. His voice was muted and mellifluous, with a slight Italian accent – enough to make a difference, but not obnoxiously so. His large hand was at her back, effortlessly supporting her weight. The inquisitive glint in his eyes probably mirrored hers.

The air pulsed around them.

What was this? This . . . bubble?

Only seconds after he spoke, he pulled her upright, and she closed the distance between them, suddenly uncertain.

She could see everything. The darkness did not encumber her eyesight. She could see the light bending at the edges of the hazy hemisphere that enclosed them, the air curving into a globe-shape, creating a semi-visible barrier that shimmered with their every simultaneous heartbeat.

Bella shouldn't have been able to _see _the actual _light, _especially when there was none. She shouldn't have been able to hear her heart, either. But none of this shocked her as much as it should have.

It was like a glass dome, except . . . it wasn't. There was no clear stop-and-start – there was only a partially discernible line, far off in the sky, outlining the energy their nearness radiated, until it faded back into the air like a gradual goodbye.

She wouldn't have been able to see this had her eyesight not improved . . . if she was still human.

_If I was still human?_

The crazy Bella that had surfaced over the past couple weeks wanted to stop by. She wanted to kick and shout, scream profanities, moan curse words into the night, question why the fuck all this amazing X-men shit was happening to her and where it all came from.

But part of her kind of already Knew.

~x~

Edward could tell she was scared.

He saw it in the unconscious movements she made – the slight hitch of her breath as she took in their connection. The tightening of her grip on his bicep. The slow, loud swallow.

It might have been overshadowed by something else – confusion, maybe. Or possibly a willingness to know and accept what was going on, coupled with the inability to comprehend. Perhaps she was impatient.

The fear was still there, though. Even if it wasn't at the surface.

_Tell me. The silence is killing me._

Her voice was a peal of bells, quiet and subdued. She had an almost unnoticeable lisp – she pronounced her S's differently, holding them a beat too long and touching her tongue to the roof of her mouth too close to her teeth, exactly as he recalled from before. But now, he could hear it with a clarity that wasn't custom to the sets of ears he had to borrow when he had none of his own.

"What is your name?"

He could hear every tone, every tremor in her throat, every note, spun together into one steady, lilting song.

He missed a beat.

"Edward Masen."

Silence. The crickets, and the rustle of a small animal in a spruce. The calm exhale of a deer a mile away.

"What's happening, Edward Masen?"

She was still looking up at the sky, transfixed.

Could she see it as clearly as he could?

"You already Know."

Throbbing air pressed lightly against his sternum and his spine, echoing their heartbeats in perfect synchrony. The edges of their connection behaved like water in a glass set atop a pounding surface – interrupting the sky in undulating, sinuous waves, distended like a layer of quivering surface tension. With every beat, the boundaries were disturbed, settling and stilling until their pulse disrupted the peace once more. Her heart skipped a beat – he could feel it in the air around him, through her hands at his shoulders, and in his own heart.

Then it quickened.

As did his.

"Your assumption implies you would Know better than I do."

He couldn't tell if she realized she had used the celestial meaning of the word, or if she had done so unknowingly.

"Well, what _do _you Know?"

Bella ghosted her fingers down his arms, her eyes downcast, bringing his hands to hers so that they tangled together at their sides. Moving slowly, she led him to a patch of short grass and sank down lithely, folding her legs beneath her. The movement was unconsciously graceful.

And then she was gazing up at him shyly, patting the grass beside her.

"Sit with me, and I'll try to tell you."

Edward mimicked her actions, falling deftly to the ground at her side, and let his fingertips brush hers.

He would follow her lead.

It would be her call.

She laid back, weaving her fingers with his, and dragged him with her, scooting closer until the curves of her body fit with his lines.

"I don't Know much," she started softly, stroking the blades of grass near her cheek with her uncommitted hand. "Everything was a blur, more and more every day. The only constant was this . . . _hope_. Like something drastic was about to happen." Then she smirked. "Not to point any fingers."

He chuckled, just once, but she didn't take notice. Her face was crumpled with thought, like she was overanalyzing. Struggling for insight.

"There was depression. Excitement. Dread. Mania. Back and forth, all over the place, and I couldn't control it, any of it. And it all came after . . . ." And here she looked timidly into his eyes. "After a falling star . . . ?"

A star?

"What did it look like?" Even Edward could hear the confusion in his own voice.

Bella didn't break eye contact. "It lit up the whole world, Edward." Her tone was so solemn. "My world, anyway. I mean, the sky was bright before, but I had never seen it so . . . _alive. _It wasn't just blue – it was light, and darkness, all mixed together, in shades of indigo and violet. It was like God was painting a line through the sky with His paintbrush, because it didn't fade, or die away, or disappear – it stayed there. And although it was beautiful . . . I wanted to wipe it off the clouds at the same time. It . . . it _offended _me. It _disgusted _me. But at the same time, I wanted to be the only one who could see it. I didn't want to share its beauty. I wanted to bask in it alone."

While she had been talking, something clicked.

Indigo and violet, streaking through the sky . . . .

"That was me, Isabella."

~x~

Surely he was joking.

But part of her trusted his words.

Then, of all times, reason had decided to make an appearance.

No bruises marked his luminescent skin. No burns stained his exterior. No part of him was disfigured – no hinge disconnected, no joint dislocated, no bone broken. Not even a limp. The only part of him that didn't behave was his hair, which lay in casual disarray across his forehead, an innocent mess that fringed his sad-moon oracle eyes. She felt panic at the prospect of him being hurt. She felt remorse at her comment of disgust. She felt pain for his nonexistent pain, fear for his nonexistent fear, and she was perplexed that it was even nonexistent in the first place. Shouldn't he be aching? Shouldn't he be hurt?

He was gauging her reaction. In this torrent of indecision, in this surge of oxymoronic contradictions, somehow, only one emotion surfaced.

Belief.

"How?"

His eyes were blazing, a roiling, swirling abyss of agitated silver-violet, scorching, burning, searing into her, stealing her breath, annulling her fears, her doubts, rearranging her psyche until he was all there was, all that ever would be – all that ever had been.

"Bella," he whispered. His voice was hot-sticky, thick-honey liquid, full of sanguine desperation and sweet promises.

And then, impossibly, they were even closer, and his hand was snaking up her side, leaving trails of piquant ice that raised gooseflesh and incited electric shockwaves that did not subside, did not abate, and she didn't want them to stop: she didn't want him to stop.

Dream. Dream of the unachievable, of love that could only exist in your imagination. Savor it when the dream is reality, even if the reality is unorthodox, distorted, or imaginary. When the difference between what is authentic and what is fallacious is unclear, take advantage of it, because there will be no better opportunity to erase the lines in the sand than when the future hesitates . . . for when you cross the line, and the truth is clear again, it won't matter. Because you'll already be on the other side.

The truth of his skin on hers, of his pale, velveteen flesh flush against her own, was her undoing.

Bella crossed the line.

She didn't care if she was stepping into reality or a world of exquisite phantasm, because she was here now, and she wouldn't look back.

He was skimming his nose over the soft skin at her shoulder, moving up, and she was so aware of him, his eyelashes brushing her collarbone, his breath carrying over her throat to her nose, honey, sun, _Edward_ . . . and then he was _there_.

His lips were moving against hers, and she felt rather than heard his words.

"I was your guardian angel," Edward was saying. She could taste his breath, ambrosial and unique and sin. He sighed, sending a new wave to her tongue, and she was shuddering, but she didn't know if the cause was his wicked flavor or what he said next.

"But I fell in love with you."

And they dove deeper. He was clutching at the cloth that sheathed the small of her back, cupping her face and sliding his hand into her hair, pushing back loose, wispy tendrils, his fingers in tandem with his tongue, and she was slack for all of two seconds before she was pressing back into him, her hands trapped between them at his chest.

"How long?"

A stillness full of implications.

"Three thousand years," he murmured, slowing. Stopping. He drew back, his eyes were closed, and his forehead was against hers. She could feel his brow furrow.

Bella didn't flinch.

"Where?"

A shaky exhale, and worried circles between her shoulder blades drawn with a rigid finger.

"Above."

Nervous quiet. A snake at the edge of the meadow, slithering and gliding through the tall brush. Water being drawn into the roots of the grass at their ears, and the _shimmer _of the air. _Quick. Rapid. Uneven._

His heart, or hers?

"Why?"

Doused in his thin, trembling breath, pulled taut and strung tight by the bold-sharp effects of his touch, she traced the contours of his spine with her finger and felt his shiver skate down the skin there. Felt the erratic jumping of his heart through his chest in her own. Felt the tips of his hair graze her temple. Felt his tear slide over her neck, underneath cotton, down the side of her breast.

Felt his answer, arcane and esoteric and abstruse . . . yet easy, basic, intrinsic. Deep-rooted in her core.

"We share a Soul as old as humankind. . . and the only reason we are so old is because we were formed so similarly to God."

He admitted this like he detested this as fact, and he spat it out with loathing so pure and unadulterated she felt . . . guilty.

"What does that mean?"

Edward's sigh was full of ancient grief.

"We used to be one –" he cut off, irresolute. "One . . . _person_. We were dangerous. Nothing . . . ." He drew in another tremulous breath. "Nothing lived. Everything died. We were _evil. _And we didn't have to do anything to earn that title – it was how We were created."

It was a tale – a fairy-tale concocted by a long-dead storyteller to entertain the masses. It went in one ear and out the other, like beautiful, tragic music that would make you stop to think about despondency, but you would move on, because it would have nothing to do with you. And there was a rip in her chest she hadn't been aware of until now – a rip that was mending, healing.

Did any part of her world remain unchanged? Or was it all a travesty?

He continued on, his grip firm, yet soothing, while his fingers aimlessly drew patterns at the crown of her hair.

"A theory about the Earth surfaced during the Era of Enlightenment, but it is not widely recognized," he spoke softly, smoothing curls over her forehead and pressing kisses to her hairline. "Somebody wise said, 'God created the world, and then He left it alone.' No one knew just how right he was."

She blanched. "What are you saying?"

"God isn't here. He's gone, creating other worlds. There are no miracles. There are no prayers answered – only accidents, whether they be fortunate, of no consequence . . . or catastrophic. He's interfered with this world only once, and that was to split Us in two; we were devastating the Earth before its time. If God had not intervened . . . the world would have been annihilated three millennia ago. And it would have been Our fault."

His voice cracked several times, breaking in some places, lurching forward in others.

Was this painful to remember?

And that was all Bella could ask him.

"How do you remember this?" she asked, taking his hand that cradled her neck and interlocking his fingers with hers. She brought them to her lips and pressed a kiss there.

A rumble rose in Edward's chest, a combination of a growl and a strangled cry.

"The question is, Isabella . . . how could I _not _remember this?"

"I don't," she challenged, meeting his misty-wide owl eyes with a shadow of defiance. "I don't remember anything."

He acknowledged her with a smirk, then said, "Only because your mind was erased."

"That's unfair. How come I'm the one that has to be in the dark?"

And then he was chuckling, smoothing circles into her palm with his thumb. "Sometimes I'm the one that's in the dark. We take turns."

"But why? What's the point? Why don't we just do what other people do – go to Heaven or Hell?" Her frustration was evident in her tone. "What's so special about us? Why are we like this?"

"I don't know why we are like this, Bella. I wish I did." He turned onto his back and watched the air mimic their heartbeat, oscillations rippling from the center to the ground in a wide arc. "But I can tell you that after this life . . . when we die . . . we won't return to our mundane existence amongst the clouds. You will go to Heaven. And I will go to Hell."

"No, no . . . _no,_" she was saying, and then Bella was over him, holding his face between her hands, straddling his waist with her thighs. "You will _not _go to Hell, Edward. You _can't. _How could you say that?"

But he wasn't looking at her. He was looking behind her, over her shoulder, at the sky. She turned her head and saw what he saw.

"Because I shouldn't be here," he whispered.

And they watched, helpless, as a black funnel carved a path through the trees.

~x~

**Hopefully the sectioning didn't confuse you. If it did, it started out in Bella's point of view, switched to Edward, and then went back to Bella. But this was the last chapter of nine that was prewritten, so I couldn't really switch anything around without having to sit down and think about it. Yeah, this is chapter eight . . . but I tossed the original chapter seven because it was shitty and pointless.**

**And don't kill me but . . . even after all that transcribing, I only have half of chapter nine done.**

_**cringe**_

**Don't throw things at me y'all, I swear I'm still writing. Just something's happened in RL that made the whole "eternal, unconditional, preternatural love" topic feel like fingernails on a chalkboard. Just roll with me here, I got this. Mind you, very slowly.**

**Anyway, leave a review so I can thank you for reading (:**


	9. nine

**A/N**

**DISCLAIMER: Characters and all things Twilight Saga belong to the Honorable Stephenie Meyer. However, these words, along with all unrecognizable intellectual property in this chapter and all other chapters of this work of fiction, belong to me. Plagiarism is theft. Do you want to be a thief?**

**WARNING: The following is rated M for a reason: prospective violence, angst, questioning of religion, occasional language, and the inevitable lemon or two.**

**Oh, look, an update. And it's only two months late. Um . . . **

**I'm sorry?**

**Okay I know that's not going to work. Hopefully not all of you will decide to flounce or throw rocks at me. Life threw a curveball . . . and then it threw a screwball. And then it hit me in the eye and I didn't even make it to second base and then it started raining so the field got washed out and my teammates are fucking bitches.**

**This is metaphorical – I don't play softball, just so ya know.**

**Sorry it's so short . . . but I feel bad for making you wait. Notice it doesn't talk about love. There's a reason for that, and hopefully you'll understand I can't write about love in this context right now, but I'm trying to give y'all something.**

~x~

**Chapter Nine**

Energy spins between the hands, its presence defined by only the refraction of the light that radiates softly from nearby stars. Fingers twitch and encourage, persuading direction and coaxing speed, and the axis is tilted with a flick of the wrist. It grows larger – begins to pulse, solidify. Wisps of palest white turn to tentative curls of vapor that join, a new frozen pseudo-life of its own. He sends the icy sphere into the black nothing, and it carves a trail through the dark, glowing softly as it travels. Comets are a favorite of His.

It's not long before the process must be repeated. A new planet, perhaps? A new life form?

Not now. The dim red sun, yonder, must be put out of its misery before it folds into itself and turns into a black hole, and the rocky globes and moons held in its orbit must be prodded toward different gravity districts. Longing permeates His hallowed being as He floats, loath and disinclined, to the small, uninhabited galaxy.

_For everything born, there must be death._

He is surrounded by black and white, light and dark, shades of grey that are few and far between. He doesn't feel like he used to feel, see like he used to see. Color is rare and forced. These creations, almost copies of each other, spin aimlessly in this oppressing void: all stone and air and free-flowing water; all hydrogen and fission, fusion and fire; ice and cold and no meaning or life. He hasn't crafted anything new in three thousand years.

One could say He is reluctant to take that risk again.

The familiar movements are made, the energy flows through His fingertips, and the sun calmly implodes at His command, the tiny balls of rock that were held in its gravity scattering in the sudden emptiness like a broken pool ball formation. Working to keep them from colliding, He herds them into space and weaves a new yellow sun out of nothing. The young thing revolves much faster than its ancient brother. The planets align. Moons find new planets or an orbit of their own. The darkness swallows the old galaxy whole.

There is structure here. There is order. A way of life? This routine, however dull and monotonous, establishes and maintains the balance needed to keep the universe intact. Having peace and preserving the equilibrium has its own feeling . . . a sense of wholeness, a taste of completion. Change is obvious and alarming.

He tried to avoid this, by instituting habit He has managed to stick to for millennia. Was the tedium all for naught?

For God feels a disturbance light-years away.

Even the Almighty can have fear.

~x~

The taste of harsh reality was acrid and sour on her tongue.

Artificial wind fucked her hair, sharp debris at her instep, skin unyielding and newly sturdy. He was at her side, but he didn't make a sound. She felt she could reach out and her hand would pass right through him, this was so fucked up and unreal.

What happened to the fairytale? Why did she have to run away from the best thing that's ever happened to her?

She couldn't help but wonder, with slightly morbid fascination, if the tornado would even be able to harm them if they stayed. Bruises were oddly lacking, blood mysteriously absent. Now, she should be a mess.

The storm had cleared the air, cleared her head. Lucidity had crept back into her consciousness.

Bella wasn't sure if she wanted to be lucid.

With a sort of empty curiosity, as if on auto-pilot, she studied the dark geometry of the tress that whirred past, wondering at the clarity and the sharp detail. Had she been blind? Was everyone able to see so clearly?

Was this man-angel at her side full of magic?

Did this make _her _an angel?

~x~

**):**

**Soon . . . hopefully. I'm sorry.**


	10. Chapter 10

This is Kayla's sister, Autumn.

Kayla has cancer. We were told over the summer. She fell into a coma early November, and she hasn't… yeah.

Her brain activity is going down. We were told this would happen, but… it's always too soon. She's on life support. If it keeps up, they're going to pull the plug in January. But she squeezed my hand a couple days ago, so…

My parents asked me to go through her phone to respond to all the texts and phone calls she's been receiving. I found a lot of emails from FanFiction, so I thought I'd check her FanFiction folder… she had two chapters for her other story, but none for this one.

I love her so much. I know she loves you guys, she was always on this site. Hopefully she'll be back, but… yeah. Please think of her. It's so hard right now.


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